Natalie's

Enlgish at university

Posted by nataliesturm , Wednesday 14 July 2010 21:14

This semester is the first time I took the English course at the university. My class is the last class of the old studying program at the faculty, so I didn’t had English as an obligatory subject before. Luckily I learned English at school, so I had some base to get through these years of university. Most of the best information in our discipline is in English so it’s really necessary to understand some of this language. I had a lot of friends and classmates that didn’t speak it very well, and some of them had a really hard time reading papers.

I decided to take this intermediate course of English because it had been a lot of time since my last lesson at school. Since then I read a lot in English and had the opportunity to talk with some foreign people that didn’t understand Spanish. However, it was long ago I wrote in this language so I really wanted the opportunity to practice a little bit. English is one of the most important languages because it’s the international way of communication. It’s also the language of science, since you can find all the information you need in English. All the papers are presented in this way. Also to do a master or a PHD in another country you have to take some English tests because depending on the country these courses frequently use this idiom.

During the 5 years I studied in the faculty I frequently asked myself why we didn’t have English as an obligatory course, like it is in some other universities. I was really glad when I found out that the new program included this language as a new subject because it really makes your life easier. I have a lot of friends that had a lot of difficulties because they had never read something in English and it took them hours to translate papers or other type or texts. I think they would have been very happy if they had the chance to learn a little bit more of this idiom when we started university. Some of my classmates took English as an elective subject like I did now, but in my case I never had the chance before because it didn’t fit in my timetable.

In my opinion, English at university is very important and it should be an obligatory subject for all students. Knowing this language helps you to expand your limits and makes your life as a professional much easier. Communication is an important issue in this globalisation times and the chosen language to do this is English, because it is mucho simpler then other idioms, like Spanish or German. I’m really happy because I finally was able to take this course. It was a good way to practice and learn more of this idiom. Happily students have now the chance to take the course, it’s a big advantage.