Do you know about the ‘English Training Program’ at Daegu University?

  Our university has many programs for training foreign languages. Many students don’t know, but these training programs are on the university homepage. I usually visit the ‘International-Exchange’ page of the university homepage and see these kinds of announcements. Among them, I applied for overseas training to improve my English skill.

  In my case, it was a program that I could go to one of three countries; Australia, Ireland or the Philippines. The training period was for one semester and it was a program to study English at a university there. The good thing about this program was that Daegu university supported the tuition and homestay fees. In order to be able to apply for this program, I needed to have a university grade, have taken the TOEIC test and completed an English interview. At that time, I applied to the Ireland course and luckily I was able to pass and go there.

  Let me briefly introduce the system of English training: the classes were made up of about 10 students from different countries. The class took 4 hours in total, generally two hours for the reading class and two hours for the speaking class. The best part of the lesson was that I could get to know the English of people from various countries. Unlike Korea, the students’ attitude was very active in class. The classroom atmosphere was very good, free to present and give feedback.

  At first, these things were confusing to me because their different pronunciation and accent was difficult to understand. However, I got better at it and became more confident, and then I was able to participate positively in the class.

  The social activities and clubs in the Irish university were also really good. In the case of social activities, the programs were changed every week. Activities were also different every day: from Monday to Thursday the program mainly consisted of training English interview and English resume skills, including a variety of conversation. Friday was mainly sport activity and Saturday was a trip around Dublin. The activity itself was great, and it was a really good opportunity to speak English with a lot of new friends.

  Clubs also consisted of many kinds of activities such as sports, discussions, travel and musical instruments. Among them, I was most impressed with the ‘Taekwondo’ club. It was so surprised that the Irish people knew ‘Taekwondo’ and even to see the students practicing was really interesting.

  To explain the living part, ‘homestay’ is the biggest part of life there. In my case, I enjoyed living in a homestay. In fact, the main reason I supported this program was that I could take part in homestay and I was fortunate enough to meet a really good family, so I had a happy time. However, not all homestays were good. It is not dangerous because the homes were designated by the university, but someone experienced mental trouble. Some of my friends had a really hard time because of the unkindness of their families. It's not all cases, but you could be prepared to take the sweet with the sour.

  What do you think? You want to go there, don’t you?

  I hope my report will help many DU students to become interested in these programs and join a lot! Thank you!

L.L.F reporter Eun-young Kim