As part of my secretarial studies, I have been carrying out a six-week placement at Alpha School of English in Malta. It has been a great opportunity for me in many ways. I helped the Sales and Marketing Manager with various tasks and therefore have been able to put into practise what I have learnt throughout my school year. I worked on different things such as including presentations, databases, letters, mail, Internet research. All these tasks are related to what I am currently studying and have provided a good working experience. My internship in Malta also greatly helped me to improve my language skills since I have been surrounded by English – speaking people. Besides, I was also given the opportunity to attend English classes which definitely helped me to become more confident in English. In addition, working in Malta has also given me a chance to discover the island and get to know a new culture and way of life.

As an intern, I work in the office of Alpha School of English in Malta. I find this experience very useful for me. Even after the class I continue to practice my English with colleges that work with me. We speak only English because although there are a lot of Maltese people, there are also some foreign students that’s why our common ‘lingua franca’ is English.
As part of improving my English, I have a chance to try my skills in different types of work. It’s a very big advantage of internship in Alpha School that the work isn’t monotone and repetitive. For example, I liked a lot the idea to write some small texts for school’s blog. Of course it’s difficult for me to express myself in foreign language but it’s very useful for my English. Secondly, people from other nations can read my observations and add their opinions about Malta, School and their own experience.
Another type of work is the translation from English to Russian. In my professional life I have done a lot of written and oral translations from French and Italian languages. I like to choose the best variety of the translation in Russian and to compose the same English text in my own language. It’s a very creative and interesting activity.
Internet research and writing articles are more examples of my work. I take the opportunity to change my activity every hour so my internship doesn’t become routine and boring. It always depends on you and your leader.

After my visit to the capital of Morocco, Rabat, one of the biggest cities of the country, I expected to find a large town with numerous habitants and animated urban life. But Maltese Rabat is something very different and doesn’t look like Morocco’s capital. It’s a very small city with the central square and a church. From the center there are some streets that lead you to different touristic places like Catacombs of St. Paul. I have never been to such an attractive and mysterious place. Curiosity and at the same time a fear, made me follow the narrow passages and go across lines of empty graves. There weren’t a lot of tourists so the catacombs seemed more fearful and dark. I saw a lot of Christian catacombs in Italy and Ukraine. But i think these one were the most interesting and original. My advice: don’t take an audio-guide: so much superficial and useless information that you will get tired to listening to it.

I had a wonderful experience to travel with a scooter across all the island. It was a really exceptional trip. I think that in these two days I discovered more then in my tree weeks stay here. But now I’d like to speak about Maltese roads and drivers that seemed to me both very particular. Roads… well, travelling on the scooter, you feel it’s imperfection stronger. I hope you understand what I mean… even small holes, stones and broken asphalt make you dream about comfortable limousine with air condition and soft seats. But thanks to our adventures I forgot about these small discomforts. We had some troubles on the road but Maltese drivers were very kind with us and always helped us. When we got lost I only asked information to the near car’s driver about the right direction and the man proposed to accompany us where we had to go. The same situation happened several times during the day. Don’t think that we weren’t able to understand alone. The problem was the road signs. It was so difficult to find the right indicators or the towns’ name that we were looking for. But there were other things that I really liked on Maltese roads. For example, the inscription with huge white letters on the asphalt: SLOW. I have never seen something similar in other countries. Or, the long cycle tracks that connect two big cities. Only one observation: in two days I haven’t seen any cyclist on them.

Today we had a very interesting lesson organized by our teacher. She offered us some popular Maltese specialties with Kinnie, which is a local beverage. At first we read a text about Maltese cuisine where most famous and typical dishes were presented. It was a very curious history about the origins of Maltese cooking with a description of ingredients and explanation of way of cooking. Then we had to answer to our teacher’s questions about the text. At the end Corinne offered some cookies: pastizzi with ricotta and mashed peas, crackers with salt and rosemary and Maltese cheese – “Gbejna”. It was very nice breakfast à la maltaise. After reading and discussing, I realized that there are still a lot of new specialties that I didn’t try. Corinne suggested us some popular places in Malta where we can taste delicious sweets and buy the crusty local Maltese bread. L-ikla t-tajba!

I have to confess that before coming in Malta have never heard about Maltese language. I thought it was a variety of English because of political domination of Great Britain on the island. I was very surprised when I read in a guide that in Malta there are two official languages: English and Maltese. Some other information that attracted me was the history of the language that is very complex and full of interesting facts. When I arrived in Malta I heard Maltese people speaking their own language and I was very surprised by its particular sound. It was similar to the Arabic language because of frequent use of “h”, I think. When I watch Maltese television I have a strange impression that I understand a lot of words without them making sense. It’s because Maltese speaking insert a lot of Italian and English words in their speech. Our teacher explained us that Maltese people prefer to count in English because it’s easier and shorter. Maltese numbers are very long and difficult to pronounce. I liked a lot Maltese songs: it’s very nice to listen to the singers that sing in Maltese.

Today I was thinking about the book that we use during our lessons.  According to my opinion the school chose a very interesting and efficient students’ book.  At first we need to notice that every level has its own book that corresponds to the students’ skills in English.  But all the books have been written and designed by the same authors so they are tied with the same ideas and structures.  For example, in the upper-intermediate level there are more then 35 units.  Every unit begins with exercises for conversational purposes.   It’s always interesting to speak to other students and compare different points of view.  Often authors propose very debatable topics which require from students argumentative answers and provoke dynamic and vivacious discussions.   Every lesson is dedicated to a specific theme, for example, animals, major events or historical monuments.  So we have a chance to study very different spheres of English lexis and to practice it during conversational part of the course.  Than usually we pass to some grammar rules that we practice doing a couple of exercises.  Photos and drawings make the book more amazing and appealing for students.

Wherever I travel I am always particularly interested in two things: food and music. Well, unfortunately I didn’t have an occasion to taste typical Maltese food yet but of course I’ll do it before my departure. Regarding the music… it’s more difficult because of so different kinds of music that I hear in some of the local contexts. At first, I should notice: there is a very popular melody that I hear every day and everywhere on the street, in the shops, from the cars and on the radio. My friends and I call it a “popular Maltese summer hymn”. It’s a sort of dance music with modern rhythms and a very recognizable melody. Secondly, once I heard instrumental music playing near the restaurant of typical Maltese food. I didn’t know some string instruments similar to guitar. It was a very nice and calm music. My third experience of Maltese music was the concert of young singers on TV. I don’t know if one can call this type of music typical Maltese. It was a European standard popular music in Maltese language but it was not interesting and particular for foreigner tourists.