Eugène KORZILIUS 2ES
My Experience at EF Eastbourne
For my “Seconde” end-year, I decided to do a three-week long English Stay at the EF Eastbourne school.
Eastbourne, 19 miles east of Brighton, is a town of East Sussex on the south east coast of England. Nevertheless, Eastbourne was the perfect place to do my first EF trip because of his town centre, shopping mall called “The Beacon”, his Pier and his great beach near the centre.
I took the Eurostar on the Sunday before my first school day and as I arrived at the London Gatwick train station, I was picked up by a taxi, which drove me to my host family. It was situated in “Stone Cross”, 6 miles north of Eastbourne. I had three other roommates, an italian, a spanish and a turkish students. Staying at a host family was a great opportunity to speak after the classes in English with my roommates and also improve our language skills together.
On our first day, I met the other new students at the school. All students came from different countries like Spain, Italy, Belgium, Hongria, Czech Republic, China, Taiwan, Argentine or Switzerland and it was pretty interesting to compare cultural and social aspects of our countries. As we arrived at the school, the school gave us badges on which they were written where our name, our home country and some information about the school. The EF Staff started with reuniting all new students together and starting some ball games to learn to know each other. Afterwards, a bus drove us to the cliff where we had some free time to visit the beach and admire the great landscape that the cliff offered. When we were back at the school we had to do a short oral test where we had simply to talk about our country and our hobbies. The test had to confirm the class level in which we’d go for the next weeks. Following it, the EF Staff did us, while offering us some fresh shortbreads, a small introduction speech about the city, the school and more importantly the rules we would have to follow during our stay. Later on, we had been able to go home and we decided with some friends to go to a café and speak a bit to learn each other more.
Next day started the normal class days. I generally started my day with twice 1h20 of general classes with my C1 group. Those classes were the main ones. We were usually 15 students, which was great to be able to interact a lot with the teacher and the students and making all of us more comfortable. The classes focused mostly on oral and comprehension. We always had to do some short sequences of oral or short written exercises with our neighbours or in groups. We had everyday a different course topic (for example: advertising, women rights, health, volunteering,…) which lead us to some interesting talks in class. We often had to do some short group presentations in front of the class, which was a great opportunity to improve our pronunciation and our oral ease. We also had some time to do some class debates in which we had to endorse a role and develop arguments. Generally, the classes were very dynamic and we rarely got bored.
Later on, I had (except on Fridays) an hour of intensive class, which, beside the name, were more interactive and fun classes. Those classes classes had weekly topics (for example: space, animals and fashion). We had a different teacher and we were with different students, which was a great opportunity to meet other people. These classes used more different course modes like an internet game named “Kahoot” which worked with the class computer and our mobiles or Messenger bots made by the EF teachers. It was pretty fun. Afterwards we had our lunchbreak.
In the afternoon, we usually had the Juniors (under 16) Activities. We had everyday some diverse activities like sports trainings, cinema session, museum visits or water-balloon fights. After it we were free. I usually hung up with some friends in the town center or at the beach and went home afterwards with the bus.
On the week-ends, we could do what we wanted in Eastbourne or trips to places like London, Brighton or Stonehenge organized by EF. I did the London trip with EF during my first week-end and it was actually well done because we were able to see the most important places of London and then got some free time. On the other week-end, we went a second time to London but without EF because we wanted to see places that we couldn’t see with EF.
At the end of my stay I graduated C1. I spent a great time in Eastbourne and I met so many different people that I’ll miss a lot and I can only recommend to do an EF trip!