The final blog

Good evening,

Throughout my entire first session of college, I have been given the task of writing blog posts with a variety of topics concerning my EMSB internship. After three incredible months, my blogs will cease because this will be my final entry and it will contain the following : my final thoughts on my internship, my gradual development as a language learner, the results regarding my goals set in the beginning and finally, my recommendations to future students.

                         Firstly, I will remain in debt of gratitude for being allowed of having such a mouth-opening internship.Being able to work in a school board is the ultimate learning ground for language. During my internship, I had the chance to learn about several schools on the island of Montreal, a good some of the English culture present in this city and a little bit on basic computer knowledge.This allowed me to progress as a more enriched person regarding culture and vocabulary. I was being surrounded of people who were always there to help me in any way and made me grow exponentially in the inside. 

Evolution of English

As mentioned in my previous post, I feel that I have enhance my speaking skills and vocabulary.I feel more comfortable talking a person properly than talking in a vulgar and informal way.

Goals completed ?

Have my goals been accomplished ? The answer is partially.Yes I have definitely learned an incredible amount of knowledge regarding culture like politeness, but it is mostly in the vocabulary goal that I did not complete. I had much anticipation about becoming a sophisticated speaker that I ended up being slightly disappointed.Nevertheless, Rome was not built in one day, therefore I technically have accomplished my vocabulary goal but it is still under process. 

My recommendations

For those who wish to have an impeccable internship, I believe that the EMSB is the definition of perfect for English learning. I recommend this internship to those who demand improving their speaking skills and general culture knowledge.

Famous last words

To conclude, I have shared my complete thoughts and observations on this blog website. What I wished to take away with me ? Knowledge,because knowledge is priceless.

                       

this said,

Farewell

Saul-Alberto Rojas

Formality/informality 101

What is up everyone? vs Good afternoon Internet users, How are you today ?,

Properly speaking to adults or anyone is a matter of respect and to show that young students are also capable of acting in a mature manner.Sadly, I have been exposed to conversations informally spoken during my internship, but I have also been present during more formal interactions where people spoke in a subjective way.In the following paragraphs, I will be explaining both cases and the remarks that I made from this.

Informality at its peak

One day at my internship, I was stationed at my usual desk and I noticed that a co-worker of my host was sitting at her desk.Her name was Yibing and it was going to be the second time that we were going to communicate. At the beginning, I noticed that she spoke to me in a very friendly way by saying " Oh my god I've always wanted to learn Spanish it is crazy how I want to learn it!"because I mentioned that I was a native Spanish speaker. I told myself that this was not a very formal way to speak to a 17 year old college student and it turns out that she thought that I was actually 20 years old.It seemed very unlikely from my perspective.As soon as I revealed my real age to her, she then started to speak in a formal way. This made me realize how adults can speak as formal as a prime minister, but are able to speak like teenage youngsters when they are surrounded of people their age.

Formal like the Queen

Asides of the informality, there have been situations where formality was key to accomplish a good conversation. One example is when Michael Cohen entered the communication's room.He is the Head of Communications,therefore I had to address him in a respectful and mature fashion.As a college student, I stood up, walked towards him and shook his hand by saying " Good afternoon sir, how are you doing this afternoon ?" he then said "Hello Saul , I am fine thank you and yourself ?" I then thought for a second and answered " I am doing well, thank you for asking". He then replied :"That is good to know, now tell me how are you feeling about this internship ?" I explained that I felt very comfortable in this important educational establishment and that it felt very promising for my English improvements. After this conversation, I had to calm my mind because I gave it a lot of effort to make sure that I was not using informal or inappropriate vocabulary.By greeting the other co-workers in the same way each time I entered the office, it allowed to feel comfortable speaking in such a way and to also develop certain word reflexes to say while interacting with a formal person.

concluding remark

Even if there was informality at times, I felt that practicing formality is a good quality in life and this will give me an edge while talking to people.

As usual,

Until next time,

-Saul

Mastering the basics!

greetings,

My sixth blog entry will be about how my understanding and vocabulary in English has thoroughly expanded since the beginning. Likewise, I will be numerating the changes that I believe have been caused by this English internship such as accuracy,fluency and accent.

Vocabulary lesson

At the very beginning of the session, my opinion on my English speaking was pretty modest. Knowing that my vocabulary was not fully enriched, I thought to myself that I had some work to do before achieving perfection.Yet, after a 30 hour English internship, I have not reached my goal.Obviously I have learned new words and an expression, but I am not pleased with this.On another note, some of the learned words are : loonie and toonie which mean 1$ and 2$. The context of this was when I walked towards the cafeteria to buy a snack and as I got to the cash register, I realized that there was not a credit machine. Not knowing what to do, a nice gentleman asked me " what do you need?a loonie or a toonie?" At first, I did not know what he meant by that until he showed me a hand full of coins.I then concluded that it must be an English saying. I searched it up online that evening and discovered that it is known throughout the country. In the end, I felt proud of learning a new way of designating a dollar and enhancing little by little my English.

Time for change

I am convinced that this internship has helped me improve my English speaking skills based on the improvement of my accuracy in speaking, my fluency while speaking and my accent.To prove these statements, I will be explaining by using an example.Time for a little anecdote in the life of Saul. A few days ago while being present at my internship, I had a conversation with a woman named Yibing. She is a co-worker of my host.The conversation started well, though the night before, I had trouble sleeping which made me very drowsy and inattentive when someone was speaking to me.Knowing this, you are all probably thinking that the conversation went haywire. In fact, I was able to keep up with a good rhythm of speech,well articulate and express myself with ease. At some point of the conversation, I was dealt with a challenging of pronouncing the following word "philosophical". During a regular day, I would be capable of saying this word without a problem, though, because of the lack of sleep, I was sure that I was going to have to refer to the French language to say this word.( the conversation weirdly turned into a questionnaire about my college classes, that's why I had to talk about my class known as "philosophy") but I did not because my fluency,accuracy and accent did not interrupt during the conversation.This said, I believe that I became better in English thanks to this internship.

wrap-up

To conclude, my overall English speaking skills have improved and I am satisfied with this.

Until next time,

-Saul