What about Canada?

“You are going to talk to some students from Canada.” That was one of the first things that I heard in one of our first English classes here. I was happy about this, because I love speaking to new people and learn new things about different traditions. The students in my English class got to pair up with a Student from a German class at Queens University, Canada. We did this on the platform Linguaelive, which is especially made to contact new persons from other courses.  

The order: 

At the beginning it was kind of difficult to find a partner, but after some days I finally got one. During our first speaking session, our assigned topic was to compare the school systems of Canada and Switzerland. It was very interesting to see the differences between our countries. Did you know that students in Canada have two months of summer vacation? Unfortunately, since my speaking partner dropped out of his German course, I had to search for another partner. Luckily, I got one quickly. On my second speaking session, we had the chance to select our own topic. I chose to talk about scouts, because I am a proud scout and wanted to deliver this energy to somebody new. Our last discussion revolved around the text: “If sharks were men” by Bertolt Brecht. We already discussed this text a lot in school, so I already had a huge vocabulary to use during our session. 

Individual talking: 

We did not always talk about the assigned topics. But we had some funny discussions about the current situation with Covid-19 in Canada and in Switzerland. It was nice to hear some different opinions from another part of the world. And we also talked about the elections in the USA, because they are clearly closer to the action than we are. I recommend a conversation like this for everyone who tries to learn a new language. And it was nice to get the chance to connect with a student from Canada. 

– Stefanie, BM2 –