After finishing High School last year, Zachary Wats from Belgium came to study English in Dublin at City Language School. After five months, he is on his way home with a shiny new certificate and lots of slang!
We were delighted to catch up with the 18-year-old just before he got on a plane to go back home.
\”I also joined a soccer team called Airfield United here and…I learnt a lot from them.\”
Why choose Dublin to study English?
It’s not too far and I didn’t want to go to America or anywhere too far away. Also the price was quite good and I needed to improve my English in a faster way than just taking lessons in Belgium.
I actually thought that London in the Uk would be too cosmopolitan and that there wouldn’t be enough English speakers but it’s actually really cosmopolitan here too but it’s actually not a problem because my host family are native speakers and I also joined a soccer team called Airfield United here and they are all Irish so I learnt a lot from them. They use different words like adjectives; instead of funny they say ‘gas’ – ‘he’s gas’.
How was it with your host family?
It was great really. I was sharing with another guy from Italy for a while but then I was on my own and so I had my own bathroom and that was nice. My host was Sandra Gavin. She was great and lived in Dublin 13, Clarehall. It was about forty minutes by bus, depending on the traffic.
Is Dublin a good city?
I liked it. It’s a good city at night. The weather is not great. I met a lot of people here from all over the world. Mexico, Brazil, italy and Turkey. That surprised me a little I have to say but it was great to meet all these different nationalities.
Is Oscars a good school?
It’s important to have good teachers. I was lucky because I had very good teachers. I had Ber, she is a great teacher, and for conversation I had Karl who was crazy but in a great way, he really wanted us to improve. But you have to be really involved to improve. I think the host family and the football team really helped me to improve.
And have you improved?
Well I think so. When I came here, I started at B1, so Intermediate, and now I finished at Advanced so I hope so. I had a good knowledge of grammar when I cam here already but I didn\’t know anything about phrasal verbs and lots of other stuff so it really helped.