Expectations

In one of our Modern Foreign Languages seminar we looked at expectations: things we expect to happen during our year abroad. This got me thinking that it would probably make a nice blog post because I can talk about all the things I expect to happen in France and all the things I want to do while I’m there.

• I expect to be fluent by the time I come back to England after my year abroad. This isn’t going to just happen naturally, it will take a lot of effort on my part. I will need to be brave and talk to people and find ways in which I can practise my French a lot. I need to try not to make any friends who speak English.
• I expect to make friends in France. Again, this will require some effort on my part. I hope I’m going to be living in student halls, just to make things a bit easier on the making friends side of things, but…
• I would like to join certain clubs/groups, for example maybe a fitness class or find a bookclub or anything along those lines. Something where I can go out and regularly chat to people.
• I would like to find a small part-time job, maybe in a bar or a restaurant or something similar. I think this would help me make more friends and will help me practise my French. And it means I’ll be earning a little bit more money.
• I would like to take classes in French, Spanish and German. While I’m there I hope that whichever city I’m in has Red Cross French classes for free like Laval did when I lived there. I want to have the opportunity to go and consciously learn about the language to help me improve my accuracy rather than just building up fluency without that all important accuracy. I’d also like to take a course in German so that I can really boost myself back up to where I left off; when I do my PGCE I’m supposed to have 2 A-Levels in languages, and while I do have that I wouldn’t be confident teaching German after this long not using it. So for me, this would be a great way to prove to Cambridge that I’ve tried to push myself. I would also like to continue with Spanish because otherwise the last 2 years will have been a bit of a waste learning it.
• I expect to go travelling, not just in France, but all over Europe. I’d love to visit the Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and who knows where else. During the Easter holidays I think it’s unlikely that I’ll come back to England. My current train of thought it that it might be nice to find an intensive 2 week language learning course in Germany and enrol myself on that. Also, I’m still planning on doing the Southern and Northern Tours of France at the end, but I’ll have plenty of weekends where I hope I can visit the other aforementioned countries.

While I know not everything I expect or want to happen is definitely going to come true, I think with a little bit of will and determination I could make it happen. I want to really live life to the full during my year abroad and experience everything I possibly can.