The Chat Lounge Report #1

Chat Lounge Report #1
Partner : David
Date : November 27

I have two of my friends who have been to MN as exchange students now, and one of them, who is the 3rd year student in Bunkyo University. Before she had gone to America, she used to come to chat lounge to talk with native speakers regularly. Therefore she'd like to have a chatting with us in Japan through Skype. I wanted to know what her staying in different country as a foreigner to study abroad, and how hard the life in MN is.

As you know, it's said that studying abroad is not easy thing for us who has learned language. There are some reason I think so. First, everything of foreign country is new so we may feel culture-shocks. If it's difficult to adapt yourself to new life in overseas, we can feel stress about it. Second, we have to do housework by ourself. Its means we have to do everthing we need such as houseworks. Students who have never had experiences to do this, it will be hard for them. The most difficult things staying in non-native county should be language. That's why students go to study abroad in most of cases, but it becomes an obstacle for us even though we have confidence to speak in non-mother toungue. I mean speaking English fluenly isn't enough to make conversations smooth. American jokes are one of the good examples. Some of American jokes request to know historical facts to make an ironical remark about them in jokes. You can get the meaning even if you can understand grammatically. Actually, we need to understand society and history of country. I think that to know background is helpful when studying languages. A chat lounge partner, whose name is David, he taught me the similar ideas when I asked the difficulty of American jokes.

Finally, I could know that her staying has been great and hear about studying abroad. (This means I could know how hard studying abroad but it's really good for learners.) Nowadays I have being thought going abroad to study like my friends. On the other hands, I can't determind it because I'm worried if I won't let my stay in foreign country fruitful.