University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)

Even though I had a decent knowledge of English before comming to Australia, it has improved dramatically since I live in Sydney. The first weeks were obviously a bit hard because one needs time to ajust to the local accent, slang... At university it took also a couple of months to be completely comfortable with the fact that everything was in English. Indeed an international student has to cope with the difficulty of the class itself but also with language difficulties. Reading in a foreign language is something that takes a lot of time to improve because at first one has to read every single word to be able to have an understanding of the document but after a relatively long time one manages to improve and to quickly grab the main information out of a text to have a general understanding. I spent 2 years in Australia and I can really see an incredible improvement. Some people even ask me if I am local which is always a compliment.

Studying in Australia gave me more opportunities to learn other languages such as German and French.In Malaysia,we are able to speak multilanguage such as Chinese, Malay , Hokkien,Cantonese, Hock Chew,English and etc.Overall, i find it very advantageous to me cause i'm able to communicate with people who does speak using one of the languages mentioned.By learning other languages it means that i do appreciate other peoples' culture and will ease my communication skills with others.

My English skills were alright, already before I left for Australia as I have been living in the UK for 6 months before. However, of course I could further improve my language skills.

The Aussi English is sometimes very hard to understand, but they're very friendly and explain things you do not understand. All in all, it was no problem to communicate adequatly.

My level of English was quite good at the beginning of my course. I improved my skills in understanding ozzy slang and deepened my knowledge of business vocabulary.

i spoke english quite well before the exchange period. i wanted to experience australia, the language was not a factor in my choice. however, social interaction helped me speaking more fluently and i got to learn some local slang.