Past Student Experiences as Language Assistants

General Development & Empowerment

E.S. 

“To conclude, I would like to say that I very much enjoyed being part of the Language Assistants Programme. It was a very rewarding experience to be able to help so many students with their work or to see that they were genuinely grateful for the time I invested in correcting their work. It was something I had a lot of fun doing and it was a great enrichment to my stay in Utrecht.” 

E.H. 

“After four months, I gained more confidence and realized that my communicative skills with non-German speakers improved; I would like to introduce such a program at the university of Vienna.” 

M.A. 

 “Helping others has made me more confident about my writing, but also speaking in front of others in general. The fact that you are there to help someone made me less nervous for meeting new people and now I do not feel as nervous in other situations as I used to.  Therefore, I would say that the Language Assistants Programme has improved my social and communicative skills as well as given me the confidence to go abroad and hopefully continue helping students with their writing.”

M.D. 

“I have also gained a lot of self-confidence and am much more at ease when meeting new people.” 

Contribution to Socio-cultural Life

A.P. 

“I met really nice students with whom I had the chance to talk about their experience in Utrecht and their life as internationals living in a different country. I felt like a part of the university as I got to help fellow students.” 

“It allowed me to meet a lot of new students and learn more about the country I was living in. Thus, it was a great experience from a social and cultural point of view.”

E.H. 

“I wanted to enrich my stay through meeting Dutch students and therefore wanted to take part in an intercultural exchange” … “after four months, I gained more confidence and realized that my communicative skills with non-German speakers improved; I would like to introduce such a program at the university of Vienna.” 

E.S.

“This was a great chance to further cultivate my language teaching skills in an intercultural setting.”

E.N. 

“It was a great experience to get to know locals and to learn more about The Netherlands’ customs and culture.” 

Relationship to One’s Language

D.M.

“In conclusion, this program gave me the opportunity to discover my own language” 

O.B.G. 

“This program gave me the opportunity to learn more about The Netherlands and their teaching methods, but also other countries and cultures since the students I helped came from many different countries”.

C.H; (French Teaching Assistant)

“As I often said, I never learned as much about French and France than during this time abroad in Utrecht!”