Pauline Pastré 1ère SBC AF, 12th July 2019
Report of my language stay with LEC in the Giovanni Curmi School in Malta – 19th June to 2nd July 2019
1. The language stay organisation and the school:
The organisation I went to Malta with is named LEC and arranges language stays since more than 45 years. The French organisation offers stays in nine different countries for students and scholars in host families or residences, residential schools and campuses. The stays are for learning foreign languages with an educative environment and fun.
In the mornings we had three hours of English class, in the afternoon activities like city trips or beach and in the evening we had beach and pool parties or night city trips. The Maltese school that works with LEC in the summer for the French students is the Giovanni Curmi higher secondary school based in Naxxar (Giovanni Curmi – higher secondary school; New street in Main street; Naxxar NX 1971). This language school is a post-secondary state school offering academic courses at advanced, intermediate, and ordinary level.
During our stay in Malta we were two groups of approximately twenty students: the residence group, who lived in a residence near to the school and the family group, who lived in host families. In class these two groups were mixed into three groups with different levels: upper intermediate, intermediate and ordinary. Every group had his own teacher and apart from them, the school director and an office staff, we didn’t see many people, probably because we were there in June, the calmest month, where there aren’t so many students.
2. Activities and observations:
The first day at school we had a test to rank us in the different levels and classes. Our group was allocated to the director of the school for five and a half days.
Her class was very good and interesting, because in the class were upper intermediate students but also students, who had a better lever than upper intermediate. So the teacher exerts herself to make the class interesting and exciting for everyone: she gave us harder vocabulary and idioms that normally just native speakers use and gave us tips and exercises for exams like Cambridge.
What was also very good is that she asked us for which topics we need improvement and would like to practice and do more exercises, so that we could better advance and make headways.
The last one and half days, we had another teacher because the former one was out of her’s depth with her tasks as a teacher, director and mother. The second teacher’s class was not so interesting like the one of the other teacher, because she taught topics and vocabulary without any relation. In addition she expected us to discuss works on philosophers and philosophy, unfortunately all students had no idea about that very specific topic and we could not fulfil the teacher’s expectation. Besides she spoke very fast and it was not easy to understand what she was saying, because she did not articulate properly.
In class we have done vocabulary, grammar, idioms, speaking, pronunciation, writing, learning more about the Maltese culture and a little bit of poetry and phonetics.
3. Conclusion:
All together I am pleased with this language stay: to me it offered to discover a new country, a new culture and to meet new people. I also have the feeling that I progressed in English, extended vocabulary and learned new idioms, so I was able to enhance my English skills. Although we had three to four different teachers during this stay, which did not make it easy, because you need time every time to get adjusted to the new teacher and the teaching style.
Most of the activities out of the school, organised by LEC were also good, interesting and diversified, there was something for each taste: culture, beach, games, city trips…
The residence was also okay. Our rooms were like little flats as they were designed for an occupation of maximum two persons, we were four students in one room, it was a bit crowded. But it was not really a problem because as except for sleeping we did not spend a lot of time there as during the day we were busy with our activities or were swimming in the pool which belongs to the residence.
For the meals, we had breakfast and dinner in the cafeteria of the residence. Unfortunately the food was not so good, most of the food was packed and wrapped also freshly cooked meals were not served. Therefore it was good that we had a little kitchen in our rooms because we bought us food that we could store and refrigerate there.
The one thing in Malta that shocked me deeply was that the Maltese do not recycle plastic, they use it for everything and every time: we drank in plastic bottles (we had two new ones every day) and ate out of Styrofoam plates which we threw away after each meal. This makes the enormous sum of approximately 625 plastic bottles during two weeks within our group of twenty five people!
In addition I am not really sure if I would recommend the language stays with LEC, because we did not speak very often English besides in class and with the locals.
Four out of five group leaders were French so we communicated in French; also there English was on a low level. Only one was Maltese and could not speak French, so he was the only one we could communicate in English with.
Furthermore, the other students, who were in the groups were also all French, so we did also not speak English among each other. I am dissatisfied with the fact that we mostly spoke French during this stay. It is a pity, because the target of this language stay was to improve our speaking and communication skills in English in order to become more comfortable with this language.
4.Pictures:
Me in front of the school
Our classroom
The food from the cafeteria
One of our trips: the fisher village Marsaxlokk
Another trip: the Blue Lagoon on the island Comino
The typical Maltese balconies
Our everyday timetable
Our timetable for the whole stay