To future linguists at Queen Mary, University of London

This blog entry is essentially about my experiences as a language student at QM. I have to say that at the beginning of my degree referring to the first year of my studies, I was quite petrified by the high level of Spanish which was expected of us. But thankfully, through hard work, I got through the first year and I was rewarded at the end of all the stress as I won a two-week trip to Salamanca, Spain in a grant raffle that was hosted at QM. My trip to Salamanca really boosted by Spanish and for the first time ever, I realised that if I were in a Spanish speaking country, I would actually be able to express myself. Of course, during the year abroad, everything we had learned had to be put into practice and although at first, I felt as if my vocabulary was not wide enough to communicate properly in Spanish, with time I began to feel less intimidated by the native speakers and understood that language learning is all about making mistakes so I was no longer embarrassed by my accent or the frequent mistakes. Fortunately with time my Spanish improved and I was not making as many mistakes as I was at the beginning of my year abroad. But all good things come to an end so I returned to London and the exposure to Spanish speakers or Spanish in general is no longer very high so I feel that I have lost some of what I gained during my year abroad and some of the tasks we are asking to do make me feel like I am in first year again. But I do not think of this as something negative. I use it to motivate myself to always keep up with the Spanish speaking world by watching films, listening to Spanish music and reading books.

Overall, if I were to describe my language experience at Queen Mary, I would say it was definitely a positive one and the year abroad a year that I will never forget. I have brought back the Madrid slang with me and I can only thank my degree in languages for giving me the opportunity to both experience and acquire this type of linguistic originality.