9
© British Council. All rights reserved.
SECTION 3
NARRATOR:
You will hear a conversation between a tutor and two students who are discussing an
exchange year spent at an overseas university. First you have some time to look at
questions 21 to 25.
Listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 25
Tutor:
Hi Freya, Tom, thanks for coming today. You both spent the last academic
year on exchange programs at overseas universities. Now, at the start of this
new semester I’d like to get some feedback from you to help us to provide
more support to our exchange students in the future. Does that sound OK?
Tom:
Sounds fine to me.
Freya:
Me too. By the way, where were you Tom? I was in Germany.
Tom:
Oh, are you a languages student too? I was in Beijing studying Chinese.
Freya:
Wow, cool! Actually, I was studying management. All my lectures were in
English, and my father’s German, so I felt very much at home.
Tutor:
I actually wanted to get started by talking about day-to-day challenges Seems
like you were able to adapt quite smoothly, Freya. How about you Tom, did you
feel that the university provided enough support?
Tom:
Well, yes and no really. I mean, I did have a meeting with my course tutor
which was quite useful, and I also remember reading some travel guides and
the university’s own preparation booklet. However, it was my first time to travel
independently to another country, and I don’t really think there is any program
that can completely prepare someone for having to deal with living in a new
country.
Tutor:
That’s true, and in our booklet, it does mention the stages of culture shock,
especially coping with the most difficult stage, stage 2, which sets in after two
or three months.
Tom:
Yes, the negotiation stage isn’t it? Well, I’d been studying Chinese for a year
before I went over to China and was considered one of the best students in the
class, but suddenly I was in China and still using English all the time except in the
classroom, It just made me feel really frustrated that my Chinese skills were still
pretty limited and that I was too lazy to improve. Like you say, that period around
three months was really hard. It just seemed like even the simplest
things like going
to the shops were incredibly difficult.
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