Blogpost 7.

Honestly, I don’t remember any conversation because I have the worst memory ever. I can’t give examples but all I know is that at the beginning, when I was talking, I was like ‘’heuuum’’ and that was cutting the beat of the conversation so I was getting lost and feel a little bit shy but now I feel more confident and I can make a conversation last more easily when I’m stressed. Sometimes it still happened but it’s rarer. I still have problems with some words like: rarer (LOL) I don’t know how to pronounce it and it sounds really awkward in my ears. 

#8..Yes, #8.

I loved my internship. At first my goal was to be able to have a conversation without searching my words and by making the less errors possible. I didn’t touch my goal completely but I have made great efforts and it succeed.  It’s sure that I am not perfectly bilingual but day after day it became easier for me. I think more often to use my accent and to pronounce ‘’s’’, ‘’h’’ and ‘’th’’ and I am more familiar with the slang. I can easily understand an Anglophone person. Sometimes it gets little bit harder when I the person speak to fast but I just have to ask them to repeat slowly and if I still don‘t understand, I ask if it is possible to explain it. What is also difficult is that I am a visual person so it means that it’s easier for me to understand something that is writing than something that is telling. If I had to do something different in my experience, it’s the schedule. It was a little bit too weird having an hour of break between the hours that I had to spend with them.  The other thing that I didn’t really like was the fact that it wasn’t the same group on Wednesday and Friday so I didn’t really make link with them. I also had nothing to do in my one hour breaks.  The most challenging is obviously the way some of them talk. Sometimes you don’t understand anything about what they are saying so after the fifth time you make them repeat, you have to do like you understand what they said but it is really frustrating because you want to know what they are saying. Another thing I didn’t like was the travel period (like the majority of the class) I had almost an hour of traveling. Except all theses little things, I loved my internship, it was stimulating and fun. 

Blogpost #6

It is easier for me to speak with Anglophones persons since the beginning of my internship. First of all, I’m really more carefully with my accent when I speak. I’m trying to pronounce my ‘’s’’, my ‘’h’’ and other things like this. This is a little more difficult that it seems because you will never pronounces it in French so you don’t think about it at all especially when you are nervous or unsure, but with practice it slowly start to make is way into the brain. I still have some little problems when I don’t think about it but I’m trying to make it the more instinctively possible. Sometimes I cannot understand some people who I am with at Concordia but it is hard even for other volunteers but the majority of time I am able to understand and keep a conversation with more fluency than at the beginning.  I didn’t notice English humour at my internship I must ask to someone to explain me how it is different.  Sometimes I gave some little hesitation especially when I’m not sure of a word or when I say something on a bad way; the rest of my sentence became kind of weird. I notice that a lot of ‘’slang’’ just add an ‘’a’’ at the end of words or cut a word and add an ‘’a’’ like: ya= you, kinda= kind of, wanna, want to, etc. I have to admit that if it wasn’t an ‘’an’’ it would sound weird. Another thing about the English slang is that sometimes it is almost impossible to understand when a person writes it. French slang is closer from real French than English slang from real English. When I speak in English, I feel my cheeks muscles tighten and and a lot of time my mouth take a hoe shape.