Australia is an English-speaking country, so it is full of opportunities for studying English as long as I want, and I do.
I started to practise my English as soon as I landed at Adelaide Airport. I talked confidently with an airport staff even though he was messing up and checking all my baggage. At the beginning of my Aussie life, I had to deal with something to settle down, for example starting a bank account. I walked into the bank with awareness that it is always a good way to practise my speaking and listening with someone who serves me. I live in a homestay now. The landlady and her family like to chat with me, which also helps a lot for improving my English. Of course, campus is a much better environment to practise English.
However on campus people use academic English, which would be easier than social English for me to understand because I am more familiar with academic vocabulary than social vocabulary. The accent was also a problem in the first days, but I overcame it soon. Speaking speed is another one stop me to understand. If an Aussie is talking with me too fast, I will not follow him; and it is hard for me to speak as fast as local people. This problem is somehow awkward.
I keep learning new words for better understanding of daily and academic conversation, assisted by a website. Some of them come from conversation and some of them come from observing. For each day, the website provides a plan of learning new words and reviewing familiar ones. The plan sums 100 words per day. Moreover I could check the statistics easily to know how many words I have learnt for a period of time. Additionally, I spend at least half an hour per day on chatting with the landlady. One day, when we were talking about something pretty funny and laughed aloud together, I realized maybe I had made a progress.
BTW, I would like to share that helpful website but I do not post any advertising in the blog. So if you need the URL, please comment with your email address. I will email you later.
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