ENTRY #5 Cultural encounters

Cultural observations

At LCCHS, there is not many cultural objects or at least I have not yet seen any around the school. However, there is many posters, flyer's and pamphlets all around the school promoting all kind of different things such as college programs for the older students, activities happening in the school, reminders for different curricular activities and sports. I have noticed that in English schools elementary like high school they post a lot of paintings and art work that the students have done. They do so at french schools as well but a lot less than English schools do. As for holidays, English people value more holidays like Canada day, Christmas and thanks giving as for Quebecois, Saint-Jean Baptiste is a very important holiday. Thanks giving is actually a very important holiday for the English, almost everyone has a turkey dinner with their family as for french people, not many people even celebrate it.  I have asked a couple of students what date they open their Christmas gifts and most of them told me that they open them Christmas morning on the 25th. Mostly all of the books and magazines in the school library are also in English, very few of them are in french. In many french schools I have seen that they still have a cross as oppose to English ones where I have no seen any yet.

 

Type of English I have been exposed to

I have been exposed to mostly informal language. My host’s colleagues mostly use informal language and not slang. As for french speaking people, through out my whole high school I was exposed to a lot of slang. As for the students they do speak more slang than informal, but I was very surprised to see most of the grade 11 students speak with a very rich vocabulary. I learnt a new expression today ‘’ to start from scratch`` which means to start from the beginning. I’ve also learnt a couple of a new vocabulary words.

Foreshadowing : When you want to let people know about an event that is yet to occur, you can use foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is use as a literary device to tease readers about plot turns that will occur later in the story.

 

Rewards and challenges

So far, the most difficult aspect of my internship was being in a new environment where I did not know anybody. This experience is something new and something I’ve never really done before and it is the most rewarding part as well ! I appreciate the warm welcoming my host gave me and her colleagues as well, the students are very appreciative for the help they get which is amazing.