When English isn’t your first language, it can be really nerve-wracking to study in an environment where the majority of people are native English speakers.
Some people may talk too quickly, others too muffled, or they might speak in accents you’re unfamiliar with. They might make dozens of inside jokes that fly over your head. As a learner, it can be discouraging.
With that in mind, in this article, we’ve put together three of the best tips to help you navigate this new setting.
Immerse yourself in the language
It’s quite easy to only interact with those who speak your mother tongue .If that language is something as common as Mandarin Chinese or Spanish, you could go four years without using English, beyond basic necessities like ordering food, writing papers and emailing your professor. Even if you feel naturally closer to those from your country, it’s important to not isolate yourself from native speakers.
Make sure to join groups where the main language is English! Luckily, almost everyone in Dublin has experience with non-native speakers, and there’s a very good chance that they’ll understand you despite a strong accent or uncommon word choices/structures. Even if it’s just to get a better grasp of listening comprehension, any sort of exposure is good.
Trinity has a lot of clubs and societies that can improve your English abilities. I find that DU Food and Drink, Card & Bridge Society, Hiking Society and Climbing Society are both sociable and casual, and provide a low-stress environment for conversation practice.
What you put in is what you get out, so frequent participation is your best bet for improving your language skills.
Participate in class discussions
This has two benefits: you become more memorable to your classmates, professors and TAs while also gaining a better understanding of your subject, and you end up improving your subject-specific vocabulary.
The first few times are scary, but the more you do it, the more confident you’ll become. You’ll gain practice in articulating yourself and will get better at expressing yourself in English (using the correct structure) instead of translating everything you say in your head first.
Use centres for improving essay writing skills
The Academic Writing Centre is run by Student Learning Development, which offers a variety of writing services for all students, undergraduate and postgraduate.
They offer individual, 30-minute consultations, which students are invited to attend for support with writing strategies in areas such as structuring, critical thinking, and referencing.
Appointments are limited to eight per semester, once per week, and can be booked here.
The Centre also provides “Tips Talks,” a series of brief webinars in specific areas of academic writing, including some webinars on sentences and paragraphs, which are particularly ideal for students who aren’t writing in their native language.
They also run a wide range of workshops which are entirely free, and every student can access the SLD module through Blackboard, which contains recorded workshops, audio and video files, documents as well as interactive websites and other useful resources.
We hope these tips help you and if you want to learn about student services for international students please visit the Global Room located in the Hamilton Building. Or consider becoming a Global Ambassador! You can find out more about that in our blog My favourite things about being a Trinity Global Ambassador.
