Scotland II
Communication Problems in daily life
At the very beginning, shortly after arriving at Glasgow airport, the first communication problem with the taxi driver, who was supposed to take me to my accommodation, occurred. Due to the similarity of the name with that of another street, the taxi driver took me to the city center where we got stuck in a traffic jam. So, a planned 10 minute taxi ride became a 40 minute taxi ride, but so I was able to already see some parts of the city.
Probably the hardest experience when trying to communicate happened, when I went to a barber in Glasgow. The hairstylist has been from Glasgow, and therefore spoke in a Scottish dialect, which suddenly made it incredibly difficult to describe my desired haircut to the hairstylist.
All these described communication problems occurred because of the local Scottish dialect. Scots speak, when speaking in their dialect, really fast and words where pronounced differently. This makes it very hard to follow, even if you know the English language. After a while you get used to it, but still, you always need to focus to get the meaning of the sentence.
University
Communication at the Glasgow School of Art (Mackintosh Architecture School) is comparatively very easy. At the university, English is spoken on an educational level due to the large number of foreign students who spend their entire bachelor's degree at this university as well as some foreign tutors. Students from Scotland communicate therefore at university without their dialect. The only problems occur when speaking about professional details where you need the right words to describe it. In this situation, the easiest and best way was always to just ask again if you haven´t understood it. And if you need a word, you just try to describe something using different words. Another way is communication via drawings. If it is not possible to communicate an idea or something similar in words or if it is too complicated to do so, one can always fall back on pen and paper.
Usefulness later in life
Understanding how to solve communication problems helps in many areas in later life. Firstly, when travelling to a country that is not proficient in the English language, these approaches help you to communicate through other gestures and other ways of communication.
Self-understanding
Clearly, the use of the English language on a daily basis increases the communication skills in this language. During time, speaking English gets more and more a routine, where you don´t have to think about the words anymore. You just personalize the vocabulary and get able to recall them when needed. Furthermore, all the communication problems that occurred during my stay in Scotland, helped me to understand my level of English. I know now what and how I am able to describe somethi