I am currently working as an Agency and Marketing Assistant at a Chartered Surveyors and Commercial Property Consultants in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. I went to university in Plymouth and studied International Business and French and achieved a 2:1 degree with a distinction for my French dissertation. As part of my degree we had to spend our third year in the foreign country.

I worked for a company called Alcatel (based in Brest, Brittany in north west France) who are in the telecommunications industry, and was in a department called Professional Services. There were 80 engineers in Brest and they went and set up and fixed telephone systems amongst other things for clients worldwide. My main role was to organise, book, and amend their travel arrangements, often at the last minute, including flights, car hire, hotels, trains often changing their tickets at the last minute or whilst they were waiting at/or on the way to the airport. Also I had to sort out the travel companies bills when they arrived in, and I had to sort out their expense forms for their company credit cards. During the year I also helped other members of the admin team complete quotes, ordering stationary and other infrequent tasks. I lived with two French students, and also there was one English student from The University of Plymouth there, she didn’t work in m department so I spoke French all day every day for a year! I emailed in French, spoke to people face to face and over the phone in French and used the French computer systems. This was extremely hard work at first because you have to translate what they are saying into English, then translate your response back from English to French and so it continues, but as you use the language more frequently and listen to the French natives speak with such fluency it gradually becomes more natural. I went to France in July 2004 and by Christmas when I came home it was becoming easier as I had to think less, when I went back after Christmas it soon became second nature and my vocabulary and written French improved, also because I started work on my dissertation, 5000 words in French for my uni course.

It is not just the language you learn, we also learnt about French culture and as the other English girl had a car we went around the countryside a bit which is a great way to learn too. Although it was very hard at first as I missed my friends and family and just wanted to speak in English as it was easier I was very sad to leave at the end, my job gave me real responsibility and constant French (the engineers in my department had to speak English for their jobs, although they never spoke English to me). It was the best experience and the best way to learn a language, before going to France I had been learning French for almost 11 years but I never learnt as much as I did during that time. I would recommend everyone to go on a gap year abroad if they could, you pick up phrases, vocab, grammar and accents daily. You also had to learn from your mistakes and carry on, you have to forget the embarrassment that everyone you are speaking to knows the minute you say ‘le’ instead of ‘la’ but you have to forget that and carry on because only with perseverance will you improve.

Although I have spoken little French since starting work after university I hope to find a job where I can use the language, and although you may think that you forget it, it does come back to you when you start to speak it again.

Learning a language, and if possible living in that country is the best way to appreciate the language and culture of that country, which for me was a vital learning experience, and a highly recommended one.