The English group was something new on the Expedition. That is why it was completely up to the group members to figure out what we wanted to do on the Expedition. After some thinking, we set ourselves the goal of speaking English the whole time. We would speak English in normal life situations, and try out what it is like to be a foreigner who only speaks English and does not understand Czech. This was our major goal and it brought interesting results.
Our group also had a secondary goal as we wanted to go around all the groups, see how they work and talk to them in English and make an interview with them in which we ask questions about their work, making a short documentary report.
We got results that really surprised us. Very few people understood us and were able to communicate with us properly. That was about one person out of ten. About four people out of ten tried to help us and understood us and knew a little English. Half of all the people we interacted with did not know English at all and did not understand anything. It surprised us because we thought that almost every person knows some basics of English, but that was far from true.
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What is also important is that during the whole Expedition we each had our own diary, in which we wrote down our thoughts, feelings and experiences at least once every day. We also had small vocabulary notebooks in which we wrote new words or words we wanted to remember.
Magdalena Prouzová
Our group also had a secondary goal as we wanted to go around all the groups, see how they work and talk to them in English and make an interview with them in which we ask questions about their work, making a short documentary report.
Procedure
First part:
Our Expedition was divided into two parts. In the first, we mainly focused on ourselves. We mostly spent time with our group. We visited different towns (Tábor, Bechyně) and villages and talked to a lot of different types of people, such as shop assistants, drivers, hairdressers, students and just people on the street… Because we wanted to use English in as many situations as possible, we had to search for different communication situations with them on purpose.We got results that really surprised us. Very few people understood us and were able to communicate with us properly. That was about one person out of ten. About four people out of ten tried to help us and understood us and knew a little English. Half of all the people we interacted with did not know English at all and did not understand anything. It surprised us because we thought that almost every person knows some basics of English, but that was far from true.
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Second part:
We spent the second part of the Expedition visiting other groups. We usually prepared a few questions before the visit, which we asked them afterwards and recorded on camera for our documentary report. We even observed and filmed some of their work and tried to get them to communicate with us in English.What is also important is that during the whole Expedition we each had our own diary, in which we wrote down our thoughts, feelings and experiences at least once every day. We also had small vocabulary notebooks in which we wrote new words or words we wanted to remember.
Conclusions
Several results emerge from our work. First of all, we found out that even in big towns like Tábor or Bechyně, people (or at least the people we met) just don’t speak English well and it’s really hard to communicate with them. Second, we made a video report with the other groups about their work on Expedition and made them speak English. And thirdly, and this is the most important thing, we improved our English. We spent a week trying to speak English with everyone around us, in all normal activities, including official communication, phone calls etc. and we found out that it’s not as easy as it seems. Although it was really challenging, we had a good time and enjoyed the Expedition!Magdalena Prouzová