Universiteit Maastricht (UM)

All the courses were thaught in english and an important personal work was required every week including readings, papers, projects and presentations. This was a good way to really improve my english and to make it more practical than the english learnt in France or during occasional travels. About the local language, it's not essential the speak Ducth to live in Maastricht, at least for the University. In addition, most of the Ducth people are bilingual which makes evereday live easier for exchange students. For instance many German students study there as regular students but most of them don't speak Dutch. Nevertheless it's always pleasant to learn some words and basic phrases.

The language I spoke most was english (though I often spoke french with the french and belgian people). I hardly ever had problems in communicating myself in english, though acquired more fluency. I was not afraid of not speaking the local language (dutch, even a dialect of dutch in Maastricht), because I knew that english was widely spoken. And it really is! So I did not really had the chance of learning dutch since everybody spoke english, though I got to learn some expressions.

Nearly everybody is fluent in English in the Netherlands, so communication is no problem at all. Due to the fact that exchange students from all over the world spend their semester or year abroad in Maastricht and the cohesion between exchange students is generally very high I had a lot of opportunities to practice Spanish and French as well! When coming back to Austria I got really used to speaking English, Spanish and French with different groups of people.

in fact i have chosen Maastricht because i had some knowlegde in Dutch, actuallly, more than everyday kknoowledge. I decided to go in the Netherlands to improve my knowledge in Dutch in the everyday life and to improve my English in my academic life. In fact, i only spoke English, except with some dutch student, because i lived with exchange students and all my courses were given in English. It was quite the same for the eveyday life because most of people can speak english (in the shops,...)

I learned a bit of Dutch, but it was quite hard, as everyone there speaks fluent English, and they reply back to you in English if they notice you're not local. Concerning my language of instruction, well, it was in English, and I'm totally bilingual in Spanish and English, as I grew up in the USA as a kid so nothing much to say there. I did, however, learn basic Italian with my friends, and then decided to take intensive courses in this language.

Well, after all, this was the best, to understand people from all the world and to can explain yourself is amazing. I made my best friends here and in another language from my tongue language, becuase the living together makes you to know some people very well. You don't need the Dutch in Maastricht.