Work, work, work! / report from H.O.

I’ve been in the UK for 6 months. In my language centre, a lot of international students are studying English. They are from all over the world, such as Saudi Arabia, Thai, China, Spain, Italy and so on. First few months, it was difficult to communicate with friends and teachers. There were no other Japanese, so I had to speak English absolutely, but sometimes I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. I was not used to a strong British accent either, and most students spoke English with their own accents, which made me more confused. However, I got gradually used to communicating in English.

There are reading, writing, listening/speaking and project classes. All classes require hard work, and it is not easy for me to follow the classes because most students are studying here to go to graduate school and get a master's or doctor's degree. The class levels are set for them to achieve their goals. We have a lot of homework every day. I sometimes feel it’s too much, but it helps me to improve my English skills in many ways.

In my daily life, we have parties and one-day trips with friends. We had an international party last month. Each of us brought traditional or cultural foods and we played some games. I enjoyed it very much.  I’m going to go back to Japan in December. I’ll make good use of my last two months.