Non fiction

Untitled

It was a cold and gloomy evening though it was not snowing yet; Sheffield could be so depressing sometimes. All he wanted to do in those conditions was to sleep. Hide away and go to bed. But John had promised to his friend Rebecca that he would show up to her party tonight. So here he was, getting ready for the party. Arriving there, he was surprised: there were more people than he expected. He didn’t know most of them. He said hello to Rebecca who introduced him to a guy she’d just met last week and walked away toward other people who were insistently calling her. The guy stayed silent so  John started to talk to him, asking him all the platitude clichés :his name. What he was studying. Where he was living… his name was Henry, he told John he was not from the UK .John had easily assumed so -- he came to Sheffield to study biology. John didn’t understand where he was from because he had a terrible accent and the loud music wasn’t helping either. Something struck John: it was the lack of confidence this guy had when talking to him. He didn’t talk intelligibly and was hesitating all the time. John had to consistently repeat what he’d just said though he was making an effort to speak slowly and to adopt the most understandable accent he could. It was pretty annoying to have a conversation in those conditions but John endeavoured to do it anyway because despite the fact that he was struggling to speak and to understand English, this guy looked friendly to John. Too bad he was so nervous about his English. He could easily make friends otherwise.

Reflection

What I wanted to highlight here is how hard it can be for a student from a non-English speaking country when he or she first arrives in an English university. If you have never really spoken English outside of school before it is a real challenge that can be overcome more or less rapidly depending on whether the person is shy or not. When a student arrives in England and can’t clearly express his idea or point of view because of a lack of practice, it is hard for him to show how funny, smart or cool he really is. And sometimes he may fear that people think he’s slow to understand.

Nicholas Cadet