Nanyang Technological University (NTU)

Since English was my first foreign language taken in school I already had a good foundation when I decided to do a school exchange with an American high school for one academic year. Since then, also supported by many vacations into english speaking countries, my level of english reached near-native. Given the fact, that my home university's courses are all taught and instructed in English, I was perfectly equipped for going abroad. As my English is more American style, I had to get adjusted to the Asian prouniciation, but believe did very well in the end of understanding everyone. I certainly did not have any problems of voicing my concerns, or ideas to various topics. Singapore is a melting pot of various cultures, therefore also a hub of different languages spoken. I certainly did not pick up any of those, since without any prior knowledge asian languages always prove to be a hard task.

Singapore has four official languages: English, Chinese(Mandarin), Malay and Tamil(Indian). Singaporean speak english in their own way, they speak "singlish". In the beginning I found it difficult to understand singlish but I now I have learned to understand it pretty well. I have also studied chinese during my time here. The possibility to learn chinese was one of the reasons why I chose to go to Singapore.

First of all; the language that we used was English, which is the business- and university language of Singapore. I spoke English pretty well before going there, but I improved substantially not only in the business-terminology, but also in the local slang, which sould be difficult even for an English-speaking person.

English is the major language in Singapore. Nearly everyone speaks English as it is the language of education and everyday life. Sometimes people speak some kind of slang called Singlish, which is a local dialect of English. But you are still able to understand what they are saying.

Singlish (or the Singaporean dialect of English) was in the beginning very hard to understand, especially in social life. More often the professors and teachers had been abroad and spoke a more British/American/Australian English. However, one gets used to the Singlish pretty fast.

I choose Singapore mainly due to two reasons. The first one was the English. I wanted to improve and get a really high level. The second one was more cultural as I was willing to visit new places, know new people, travel...