AUSTRALIA - ADELAIDE

Learning a language is different for everyone. Some find it easier to hear the language, some need the visual to memorize it. In my case, I need the constant communication of important as well as insignificant conversations in my daily social life.

When I was learning English at school, it was difficult for me to speak freely and I always felt embarrassed every time when I had to say something in English. So for me, the year in America was a big help to just let go and start speaking. I realized over time that it does not matter if you misspeak or say something wrong, because that is the only way you learn how to do it right for the next time. The most important thing is to trust yourself and just start talking to someone.

At that time, I had no German-speaking friends or people I knew around me, so I was forced to speak English and that went so far that I even started to dream in English. When I came back from America, it was even harder for me to speak German than English, because in my head I always started my sentence structure in English but the German words did not fit the grammar. That was quite a funny experience, but fortunately it passed quickly and I was able to speak grammatically correct German again. :)

America was five years ago from now, so it is a different feeling for me here in Australia when I speak English. For one thing, I am very open and just talk away even if I do a lot of things wrong. But on the other hand, I find it strange how much I forgot in these five years. That is why I said at the beginning that it is important for me to speak a language all the time, because in my case I would lose it again very quickly. However, being here also made me realieze that many students from all over the world are coming together in Adelaide to study and only a few real Australian´s are here. This also means that many different dialects and languages come together and none of them have a perfect English. That gives me the same feeling again like I had in America: that it does not matter if you make mistakes or mispronounce anything. Everybody does and that is the only way I will learn and memorize it.

Another reason why it feels different here in Australia than in America is the fact that there are a lot of German-speaking people around me and I speak almost more German than English, which I find quite a pity sometimes.

Last but not least, people who were born here have a difficult Australian accent, which is quite funny but sometimes very hard to understand. Especially with the older people, I noticed how much they speak in their dialect.

All in all, I can still say that although I did not start dreaming in English, I definitely got back into the English-speaking mindset very quickly and I definitely retained the basic knowledge of the language and probably always will!

Other things that I have noticed during my time here, is that I have watched TV and also Netflix in English even though I had the chance to switch it to German. It somehow feels good to me listening to English movies when I do not have the chance to speak as much English as I wanted to.