Before deciding where to go or which agency to pick, you need to know what kind of language course you want to take. For example, when I visited Cambridge I wanted to have classes focused on the Cambridge exam, so a big part of what I saw and studied was related to specialization and tests. In other words: you must decide what you want to study.
There are different areas that you can explore, if you feel like you don’t understand very well when spoken to, you might ask to your agency to take a course focused on listening. The same thing happens to writing, speaking and special exams, like TOEFL, IELTS or even Cambridge, as I did. But please, don’t feel pressured, you can choose to have general classes as well, where you will practice everything.
Now I’m going to talk about what people usually do in every one of the topics that I mentioned. Although, I won’t tell you about the specific ones, those related to professional formation and presentation. I’m not writing about them because I don’t know that much, but always have the idea that they can be done, especially if you want to improve your business curriculum.
Conversation
Some people might think that this area is very good explored in any kind of course, however, when you realize that most people have a common issue with the speaking topic, things get serious. So, if you choose to have a focus on conversation, you might have classes where your teachers will always ask you things and make you talk a lot. Usually, you might have to do some oral presentations in front of the class, but don’t worry, all your classmates will be through the same challenge.
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Writing
If you choose this topic as your focus, be prepared to have a lot of grammar. In addition to that, the teachers will do a lot of different dynamics of vocabulary, and you will try lots of different writing: letters, articles, formal requests and many more! This is the perfect class for you to improve your writing skills in general, because you learn about techniques and how is the body of each text composed with.
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Listening
At the same time it can be really boring, it can also be entertaining. Sometimes your teacher will just put you in a room with lots of computers and make you listen to a CD and do some exercises. But, maybe, you get to practice your listening skills in other ways, for example listening to music or watching a TV series without subtitles. Please, don’t get me wrong, even though it’s better to do alternative methods, understanding a native speaker might be harder than just listening to a educational CD.
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Studying abroad is one of the greatest experiences that you can have in your life, specially because you make a lot of friends, and many are from different nationalities. Be cool, everybody is learning!
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