When you come to America first time, you might be worried much about English. At the first semester, it is difficult and challenging to everyone. However, you can actively start improving your English from the first semester at the University of Minnesota. I want to introduce three very useful and beneficial resources to learn English as well as understand American culture.
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Writing is one of the primary skills that students are expected to demonstrate. We first face this challenge in the TOEFL writing session where we struggle to write to the point in a limited time. The pressure IS big. Now, the real challenge comes when we start to work on our writing assignments at school. The amount of writing depends on the field of study, but in my department, for example, the average length of one paper assignment is 10-page-long. When it comes to a final paper, the required pages can even reach 20 or more. Waaah! Don't freak out. There are certain ways and resources that help us learn to write more academically. So here are some tips for you.
I believe that one of the main concerns for many international students studying in the US is about language.
I had been quite confident about my language skills and fluency before I came to the U. However, after the first week, that confidence had vanished gradually. Why?.....What happened to me??? I believe that this situation might have happened to many other international students or will happen to many future international students as well, so let's find out about my story...
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When I was getting ready to start my graduate studies here in the US I knew I had to do very well in the GRE and the TOEFL exams. GRE stands for Graduate Record Examination, and TOEFL stands for Test of English as a Foreign Language. Here you can lear a little bit more about each of them * GRE * TOEFL *...Wikipedia is awesome by the way!
What is it like writing papers in English? Are there any resources on campus that you can have some comments on your paper?
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As an international student, you may be worried about your English as I was.
I still remember how I freaked out the first time I took the discussion class, unlike the lecture when we listen to the professors, the discussion is your time to speak out. Even though I had done with all the reading material required before the discussion, I still find it so hard to follow.
When I first arrived as an international student at the University of Minnesota, I was naive regarding the cultural differences that I would face. Being from Canada, I had visited the U.S. on many ocasions and believed it to be not unlike the country I grew up in. It looked the same, sounded the same and I would often forget that I was an international student at all. But then ocasionally, I would be reminded.
English is so hard for every international students. At least that's what I think.