For English skills, this type of practical training is priceless! It's wonderful feeling when I noticed my speaking of English changed from translating Finnish sentences to thinking in English. That's something you can't avoid when staying more than a week abroad. If we had stayed any longer, I wonder if we would have started sounding like real yoopers. *
Teaching in English sounded like impossible thing to do when we were doing our plans in Finland with Eeva. Being a teacher is not a piece of cake with one's own language, so how could it be even possible to manage it in English! Well, it just is. 3rd graders don't care if your English isn't perfect, their is not either! Actually when put in proportion, Finnish university students have studied English longer than the 3rd graders (8-year-olds) have lived. And I will assure you, if you admit you don't understand some word one of the children is using, they're eager to explain it to you with other words or just gestures! So, it's learning both ways around and it's something you can't experience any other way.
There's only one thing to do to enhance the language before traveling to the US, and that's just to unpack the thought of trying to speak English like a native. Not one person will blame you for speaking "bad English" there, people are actually just amazed that you can speak it even a little. So English is not an excuse not travel!
* The word "yooper" means a person living in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan. The yooper dialect has a lot of impact from Scandinavian languages among others, which makes it unique - and sometimes difficult to understand!
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| The Yooper Land. Picture from the website: http://dayoopers.com/whatwher.html. |
