#8 Overall reflection

My goals were to make guesses , have low inhibition and search for meanings.
Overall I would say that successfully achieved these three goals. I made a lot of guesses and the monitors where happy to help me when I was wrong. I think making guesses helped me with low inhibition because when I ask questions, people know I have some difficulties in English so they help me and I get to know them best so its easier to ask questions. I also looked several times in the dictionary when even the monitors did not know the word I was trying to say so yes I did search for meanings in this stage. The strategies I used the most is take guesses, because as I said, people know I am asking a lot of questions so they know that when I am speaking to them it wont be perfect. I will continue to take guesses and ask questions and I am sure it will be helpful in the future. I would say that my English is getting more fluent because of this stage but I cant really see the diference in my accent which is understandable, it will come overtime for sure. I learned from myself that working with children's is more fun than I thought because none of them are jugging. I would not be afraid to work with children's anymore, even if its in English and I would never imagine I could like it so its a good point for me ! I truly recommend this internship to EVERYONE because after each time I go there I feel proud of what I did for the kids and it helps with self confidence and of course it help with learning English. So this is it!

#7 Practice makes perfect

Example of interaction + correction.

Once I was talking with an other volunteer which is at the university and he's completely bilingual so he corrected me when I was not saying thins the right way.

Ex :   Me - I can see that your name Is Michael, nice to meet you I am Joel.
         Him - Nice to meet you Joel do you like being here so far?
         Me - Yes I do, kid here have a good comportment it is great.
        Him - ( he corrected me by saying that it is better to say ) Behaviour instead of comportment.
        LATER when we were playing dodge ball...
        Me - As I can see some of these kids does not accept really good to be defeated.
        Him - there is an expression to say what you mean and it is : Be a good sport.
        Me - I see, thanks for correcting me.

This is pretty much the only dialogue I remember having mistakes and being corrected.

Ah ah! moment!

I was in the gym with Adam ( monitor ) and he asked me to go upstairs see for Anthony and ask him the keys to unlock the door. So I went upstairs but I did not know who was Anthony, the only thing I remembered is that he has no hair so I asked a girl if she knew where the guy with ( no hair ) was, and she laughed! She said that a guy with no hair is a -bowl guy- which I found funny too.
So it was funny and I learned a new word!


Formal dialogue I heard : Monitor : May I PLEASE have your attention so we can begin the house games.
Kids : Well they were all listening after she asked to be quiet.
I guess ( MAY I PLEASE ) is a good formal question.


Informal dialogue I heard : One of the kids said : Comon dude throw the ball or you'll be dead!

The monitor said : Don't say that this way! first you know his name and he wont be DEAD! He will be out of the game.
      

#6 Breaking it down

At the beginning of this stage a was a little bit scared to work with child because I am not used to it. BUT... after a week I started to like working with them, they are all listening what I am telling them to do so because they see a lot of volunteers. I learned a lot of new words in this stage , like ( Wash your mess ) which means to clean up , I learned this one by looking on the wall, there I saw a poster that were saying to wash your mess. I learned ( Fool around ) by asking its meaning to the manager when a kid were doing stupid things. Friday's the day we play games like : Ballon chanseur, I asked how we say it in English and it is Dodge ball. We also played : Bonhomme pendu, for this one I learning it was Hangman by looking on the board. One more word I learned the first day was to Greet volunteers, this one I did not know it's meaning but I guessed it means : to be respectful with volunteers. Once I was helping a kid with his home works I had some problems with pronunciation because the child did not speak French and just a little bit of English but I always found the way to get to the point by making gestures or saying it with different words. For sure after about 10 hours there I became more fluent, more confident and it really helps having a great conversation.