My change of attitude towards English language.

When I was in high school, I’ve never much liked English class. My grades were rather low and I had no significant interest in improving my language proficiency. By then I didn’t have even remotely the idea that one day I would have lived abroad and studied in English. I thought I had no need and no much use for English but holidays. It was only after my first year of university in Torino that I had my first significant experience with the English language. After quitting my first year of university I started an internship in the European Parliament, eager to escape my unattractive boring routine and to try something different and somehow adventurous.  I say adventurous because by then my knowledge of English was really poor, only based on my unpracticed school knowledge.  My French was even worse.

It was indeed a major change, that required a lot of adaptation and effort on my side, but eventually that paid off. Realizing of much important is the English language even in Brussels, I tried to avoid Italians as much as possible to practice it in depth. The improvement was exponential, and it made me even more attracted by the environment, and the opportunities that the  proficiency in this language could open. After the End of my stage (4 months), I had to go back to Italy. My spoken English reached a good level , but I felt I was not done with it, I wanted to improve further, and keep living in an international environment. Is with that desire that I came to find out about Maastricht.

Once again, since I was never the most motivated and ambitious student, I was embarking myself in another difficult challenge. Not even my father had much trust in this at first, since I dropped out from the Italian university in Turin. But I appreciated the system of Maastricht from the beginning for various reasons, and I was enthusiastic. For instance, Maastricht University  gives the opportunity to everyone with a diploma to enroll, no matter the grades in high school. So if you work hard, you can manage.  Therefore I decided to start, and it was indeed, difficult. In the book “Multilingual approaches in University Education”, is shown how the chances of success increase when studying something conceptually familiar in a familiar language. I was totally new in the field of European studies (I’ve studied in a scientific Lyceum), an my knowledge of English language was still a bit weak for academic levels (especially writing skills). Nevertheless, knowing that the challenge was hard, I put lot of energy and effort to succeed the first year, and I’ve succeeded. An now I am fairly satisfied with the level of m English.

I believe that is a great thing that many Dutch universities give you this opportunity to study the full bachelor program in English; that is something more difficult to find in Italy. I do not argue that studying in English is better than studying in Italian, or any other language. But It’s great to have the opportunity if you want so. Especially in some fields, it is very convenient for the competitiveness. The Bachelor program in European studies is arguably one of the programs where this choice makes sense the most. That is because is convenient that the future people that will be working in international environments have a certain fluency with today’s lingua Franca. I could notice this in first person when I was having my internship in the European parliament. Some Italian politicians had a really poor knowledge of the English language, and  had to rely a lot on their assistants. I believe that despite the fact that they might have been good politicians, this deficiency is very penalizing in an international arena. As an Italian, I would wish that most of  people that are meant to represent me in the European Parliament have, if not proficiency, decent knowledge of English language.

 

Proficiency in English

 

As this map shows, the percentage  of population able to hold a conversation in English in Italy is rather low in comparison to many of its counterparts in the EU. Many of these country with higher level of English, also perform better in the economy ( Yes I know, not Greece).  But far from arguing that that is the solely and manly reason, I believe that an increase of the English popularity in Italy can only benefit the country and its workers competitiveness. This all adds up on the my opinion that Italy should follow the example of other European countries, and offer more bachelor programs taught in English. This could also help the Universities in Italy that, in recent years, have experienced a rapid decline in the in the international rankings.

Downsides? I don’t think this will eventually cause the demise of the other national languages, at least not at the speed  that should worry anyone. I have indeed noticed that sometimes I’m lacking some words when I have to speak Italian again, or I express myself with untypical constructions. But I don’t see it as a problem, especially because it goes back to be normal if I am back to Italy for longer than a month. In conclusion, the mild disadvantages don’t match the potential opportunities for English-Medium Instruction at Universities, which are far greater.

Published in: assignment 2 on July 7, 2015 at9:19 pm Comments (2)


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