A. Improve English Standard

Regarding the improvement of my English standard, it is vital to provide an environment for practicing. As I seldom speak English in daily life (only in class), I treasured this chance to practice my English and I had some preparation before I went to Australia.

Aggie and I took a picture once we arrived Sndney!

Firstly, I familiarized Australian accent and words by watching some Australia video clips and websites, such as Food Safari on Youtube and Australian English. Actually, one of our professors, Christoph speaks English with New Zealand accent, so I familiarize with Australian accent as it is very similar to New Zealand English. I have also memorized 8 Australian daily use English words for communication.

Australian English	British English
Sheila, sort	girl
bloke	guy
mutt	mixture
Aussie	Australian
this arvo	this afternoon
mate	friend
loo	toilet
barbe	barbecue

Second, I used some vocabularies, such as ‘Loo’, ‘mate’, ‘sheila’ when I was in Australia. (Practice makes perfect!) Here is a conversation when I wanted to go to the toilet in a restaurant near Wesley College.

Crystal: Excuse me, Where is the loo?

Waiter: Yes, the loo is over there. (point to the toilet)

Crystal: Alice, do you want to go to the loo?

Alice: Sure (pounce as ‘shore’.)

Crystal: Good, you are a great sort.

After having a seminar with Dr McDonald and Geoff, I have learnt more Aussie vocabularies and realized the relationship between social class and Aussie English. In my opinion, there is no right or wrong of a language as the function of a language is for communication among different purposes. However, under my observation, it is no doubt that the better the English, the more the chances in workplace. (just like Hong Kong) During the seminars, I marked down all Aussie words in my notebook which I encountered.

 

We all welcomed Groff to be our speaker!

 

I got some free newspaper and watch books in bookshop to see the local English usage. I wanted to watch Aussie TV programme in common room, but as there was a rat in the room, I am scared to watch TV in the room. The conclusion is as Sydney is an international city, standard English is mostly used in leaflets, magazine and signs. I interviewed five Australian for questionnaires, I also chatted wit them to ask their daily lives. I normally can have 10-15 minutes conversation. If there are more students in college, I can interact with them in order to practice my English. Unfortunately, I cannot speak English throughout the whole tour as sometimes we speak Cantonese. (I definitely speak English to Samuel and Connie.)

They are my Australian friends!!

I also chatted with a couple from United States when I was in Circular Quey waiting for the firework, I share with them the situation in Hong Kong as they has a misunderstanding that Hong Kong is just like China after hand over.


Here is an evaluation form to evaluate my effectiveness on improving my English in the tour. The result is not good and some suggestions are provided if I have a chance to have other study tours.

A evaluation from Improve English Standard