大三出國、全英語課程 - 國際視野 : 淡江大學大三出國通報及學分採認系統

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2018大三出國輔導通報系統 - 留學心得報告[編輯]

語言 405810218 　陳虹儒　　留學學校：昆士蘭大學(澳洲)

(一)基本資料

The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia is the university I decided to study in my junior abroad. The courses are starting from July to November and from February to June each year. UQ was founded in 1909, and it is one of the oldest universities in AU. Furthermore, it is known as a sandstone university and also considered to be one of Australia’s leading universities which is ranked as the forty-eighth most reputable university in the world. Consequently, the study environment is extremely competitive.(85字)

(二)課程學習

【照片說明：Writing course (Lecture)】

There are many courses to choose from in the University of Queensland. In almost every course, we have lectures and tutorials (or contacts) both in each week. In my first semester in UQ, I took three courses including Chinese>English Translation, Communication Skills, and Writing for International Students. All of them are not easy A’s; there are many quizzes and homework in these courses, sometimes even heavy reports are required, and we do have midterms and finals. If I have to recommend, I would say that the Communication Skills course is a better one. In this course, you will learn lots of active listening and expression, conflict management, intercultural communication, and health communication. What’s more, this course draws heavily on your daily life and your personal experiences so that you can learning by doing immediately. In my second semester, I learned German, Spanish, and Health & Fitness Through Diet & Exercise. In my perspective, this semester was more interesting than the previous one. Since I have a passion for learning foreign languages, I was interested in German and Spanish these two courses. But still, there were lots of assignments and oral and writing tests weekly. Anyway, it was a good method to improve your language ability and test how much you’ve learned so far. In addition, I have to say that, the educational system in Australia is very different from Taiwan. In Taiwan, you won’t say that much during the class, but here, you “need” and “have to” talk in class. It may be a challenge to us as you have to force yourself to express your opinions and words to others. We are trained to think critically, learn carefully, and talk bravely. The professors here truly respect your thinkings and give you lots of space to develop, and even asked for our feedback regarding their teaching so that they could adjust the ways they teach to meet the students’ demands.(323字)

(三)生活環境

【照片說明：The view from my studio】

Brisbane is the capital city of Queensland. It is located on the Brisbane River on the eastern coast of Australia, and it is the third largest city in Australia, behind Sydney and Melbourne. The weather here is warm averagely, even when the winter comes is not that cold which still has about 10 degrees Celsius. The University of Queensland has its main campus in the suburb of St Lucia in Brisbane, Australia. St. Lucia campus is famous for its “Great Court”, and almost everyone comes to visit here take pictures of it and upload to their timeline. There were several times when I came to school, I saw couples sitting there and shot the wedding photos. Additionally, there are many libraries at the campus, but students here are usually more hard-working than you can imagine, hence, to find a seat in the library becomes a difficult thing when you want to study in UQ’s library. I lived in a student accommodation at Toowong which is called Atira. I love here since there are plenty of great amenities and it’s convenient to go to Brisbane CBD via bus just about 15 minutes. Cross the street, there is a village and department store, and also there are many restaurants around here, so you won’t feel difficult in your daily life; you can get and buy almost everything near your house. The distance from my living to UQ is near, too. Sometimes I walked to school and it might just take about half an hour, but I took the bus if I was in a rushed way.(265字)

(四)自我成長

【照片說明：Alice Springs with my foreign friends】

Even if lots of people have some misconceptions on Aussie life, I still think that there is no culture shock here. Before I came here, many friends told me that Australians may discriminate Asians, but after I came here, I found that people here are so nice and friendly. There are a lot of immigrants and international students in Australia. I reckon it's a significant issue for universities to treat students from a different cultural background in a respected way. The only inconvenient point is that the stores and shops here are closed early, approximately 6 to 7 p.m. Comparing to the stores in Taiwan, opening until 9 to 10 p.m. and even at the midnight, so I wasn’t used to this until a few weeks later. On the other hand, it’s another challenge when we talk to Australian since some phrases and accents we aren’t that familiar or even don’t know at all; we grew up in Taiwan and most of us accepted education in the American way. Different country has the different culture, so there are no right and wrong. But via this, you can even learn more and perhaps makes new friends! Some challenges that I’ve encountered was, there are too many Asians who speak Mandarin. These cause us to rely on speaking with them and not communicating with the locals. Although it might seem good for you if you need to find friends that are in common with you in the long run, you aren’t learning or speaking with Australians, which makes your English ability to stay at the level you had when you were in Taiwan.(275字)

(五)大三出國建議

My advice for students who want to study at the University of Queensland is, try to expand your social life. Try talking with the locals and participate in different activities. For instance, go with your friends to a park for a picnic and have a great time talking with them. For the courses that you would want to take, the university offers a wide variety of programs for you to choose. If you want to take language courses, you can learn all sorts of foreign language such as Spanish or German. If you want to learn about management or economy, there are plenty of courses for that as well. For your housing, I strongly advise you to find housing in the city so that you can save some cash because the student housing is very expensive whereas normal housing, it might cost you half the price of the student housing. Learn to cook is also a bonus as the cost of living is more expensive than Taiwan and cooking your food and save you a whole lot of money. Time management is also an important skill for you to have because the programs provided by the university are quite difficult. Therefore, in order to complete your assignment and also have fun at the same time, you need to be able to control your time. There are lots of stuff for you to visit in Australia, there are different kinds of landscape that you could enjoy and you can visit different style of cities that Australia has. Go have fun with your mates when you visit Australia and make friends from places all around the world. (275字)