Nine months in England- in retrospective

I arrived back home yesterday and I am still in the middle of a reverse culture shock. The last days in Bath were strange; it is always hard to say farewell to something that grew so dear to your heart. I have just read what I wrote in the beginning of the year and I realized that I have not met all my expectations and I encountered other things I had not even thought of.

My travel to England was quite tiresome. I took a cheap flight from Basel to Hamburg and another cheap flight from Hamburg to Bristol. The problem was that I arrived at 11 pm in Bristol and neither could I get the last train to Bath nor did my taxi come. As a result I had to get a local taxi. I was quite confident about my English and so I told the driver where to go. He understood me perfectly well; I on the contrary had problems to understand him because he was from India and had the characteristical Indian accent. In my whole year I encountered a lot of English accents which I can now locate pretty well.

In the first week I dwelled at a teachers’ house from where I was looking for a room in a shared house in Bath. After having searched for one week I found an ideal accommodation: a shared house in a quiet neighbourhood where all the students lived. The house was in a good condition and my housemates where all professionals. It was very nice to live together with people so different from each other: from a gardener, stone mason and taxi driver to a lawyer.
I was glad not to live in one of the disgusting student houses. In fact it was really nice to live together with older people, because in a way I felt old too, seeing these 17 year old students that just came out of school.

The introduction to my school was rather slow. For weeks I did not know my timetable and I only started to work properly after the first half term holidays. This unhurried introduction was pleasant because I could get accustomed to my new role as a teacher. I had two introductions to my work. One was organized by the council and one by the Goethe Institute in London. Especially the first training was priceless because I got to know a lot of foreign language assistant teachers who lived in Bath. After that training we meet regularly for a pint or a meal. A lot of them lived together with other FLAs’ in one house. I was happy that I lived only with native speakers which certainly improved my understanding of the language and the culture.

In Clarendon College where I worked I taught sixth grade students. Most of my lessons were one-to-one sessions. At the beginning I always had to look for a free room. After a while my tutor suggested that I could have a little room next to her classroom. She asked if I could have the room and the official answer was no. Nevertheless she encouraged me to use it anyway. After having waited for two weeks for the caretaker to take the old junk out of the room I decided to do it my self. I put all the junk out into the corridor and it disappeared magically after two days. It was only then, that I could start decorating my room. I had taken various posters of my hometown and some maps of Germany, Europe and the World with me from Germany which I used to decorate the room. Even though the room was tiny it was sufficient and became known in the school as “Martin’s cupboard”. The students liked the cupboard as well when I introduced a new topic I could always refer to my maps and pictures which made it much more vivid.

For my speaking sessions I always gave my students texts to prepare in beforehand. The texts were always related to Germany and most of them current-affairs. The students had not only to prepare the text but also had to answer some questions to the text which helped them to develop the topic further on. After their answers we always deepened the topic. I tried to stir the topic into a direction of their interest.
Sometimes it was hard to get students to speak because they had no opinion whatsoever. In these cases I tried to speak about things they liked, but in sometimes they there was nothing they liked which made me livid. It tried not to show that, of course. In the speaking sessions I used a speaking log, which was a little booklet where I wrote the topic of the session the date and new vocabulary. After each session I signed it and before each session I asked the students the vocabulary of the previous session.

At first I really liked the atmosphere in the staff room. Compared to Germany the politeness of the teachers was overwhelming, but after a while I realised that some of it was plain hypocrisy. Rivalries and discordance existed here like anywhere else. When I realised this I was quite upset about this veil of courtesy that seemed to me to be two-faced, but this is how the world works I assume.

The whole school system is much different to the one in Germany. The teachers are much stricter and the whole lesson is always focused on enabling the students to get good marks in the exams, not to get knowledge. When you suggest such a thing to the teachers, they are irritated or disinterested at best. To understand the situation one has to consider the fact that Clarendon College is situated in Trowbridge, a dull working class city without prospects for the future. Bearing that in mind it was not too bad and the teachers just tried to do their best for the students. The fact that Clarendon College is a comprehensive school explains also why the students there are not the brightest.

It was a revelation when a German school class came on their student exchange to Trowbridge. They were all so keen to learn. One student gave me her poems and I was astonished at the clearness and deepness of her thoughts. To put this into perspective: they were all from a good Gymnasium.

In my free time I travelled around England. I went to Wales, Bristol, London, Cornwall, Birmingham, Salisbury and a lot of other places. Besides travelling I took a Cambridge Proficiency Course in the college of Bath. In addition to that I took some free language courses at Clarendon College in Arabic and Italian. The level of them was not amazing but it was good to keep my brain working.

All of the other FLAs’ went home in every holidays but not me. I spent the whole nine yards in England, the only exception was Christmas. I was obliged to go home; my mom would have been very sad if I would not have come. Around Easter my family visited me in Bath and we explored Cornwall together. The weather was grand and we had a wonderful time. We started in Exeter with its beautiful cathedral and then went straight to the English Riviera. In Turkey we strolled alongside the water front and staid the night in a little pub in Dartmouth, a picturesque little fisher town. It was a genuine experience to eat there. We had just started our dinner when the local Rugby team stormed in. They were terribly drunk which did not hinder them from drinking more. As a result, one of these bold men got sick next to us.
This is a quite good example of English pub culture, perhaps a drastic one. Another scene I encountered was a guy who celebrated his birthday in a pub. His friends gave him a thong as a present which he immediately tried on in the middle of the pub. My parents found that bewildering and I can not blame them for that.


It was quite exciting to notice all the little cultural differences between Germany and England. One thing I did not know at all was that the English prone to dressing up. Especially around Christmas I saw dozens of people dressed as angels, reindeers and other obscure creatures. Sometimes you just see a group of middle aged woman in a random costume having a laugh.

British TV shows are also amusing. The main topics appear to be about the garden, antiques, properties and wildlife. To be honest I became quite fond of them. Especially “Cash in the Attic” and “Grand designs”.
The wildlife shows, on the other hand did not interest me particularly. I could never really make out what was fascinating about some maggots, badgers or bats filmed by night vision. One reason for this might be that I grew up in the Black Forest and I am used to wildlife. The whole time in England I did not see one real forest and that might explain why most of these shows took place in hedgerows.
“Grand designs” on the other hand was more enjoyable. I savoured this show, I have always had a fascination for good design and that show presented remarkable architectural projects.
The property shows offered interesting insight into the English psyche. I reckon the English obsession with properties began in the era of Margaret Thatcher. When she introduced the law to be able to buy council houses cheaply, the whole misery began, which is nowadays known as the real estate bubble or the property ladder. By giving council house inhabitants the chance to have their own house a social pressure was ignited to step one step higher on the property ladder. This resulted in the absurd situation that people who do not have their house with 28 are considered to be losers.
To be able to buy a house by this age, you have to commit yourself financially. England is a “mortgage country” and a lot of people are slaves of their debts and mortgages. They consider themselves to be independent homeowners but in fact- they are not. In this regard I prefer the German saving mentality.

English politics still are a little bit opaque to me. I am really interested in politics but the fact that there is no written constitution does not make it easier. What I missed in England was a newspaper like “Die Zeit”. The nearest to it for me is “The Guardian”. The political shows where not satisfying, much better were the shows on Radio 4 of the BBC. The English read much more then the Germans, this becomes apparent when you take the Underground in London at rush hour. Consequently there are much more programs about authors and their novels.

It was great to see the integration policy in England. England is by far more multicultural and most of the immigrants are well integrated. One reason for this might be the long history of immigration. I think Germany could learn a lot from it. England is also very environmentally friendly. In every subject in school you can see the governmental attempt to promote the separation of rubbish and make the students more conscience of climate change and the effect of carbon dioxide emissions.

I also learnt a lot about the Second World War. It is omnipresent in England. The history channel is in fact a WWII channel. My housemate was always watching the history channel when I came home from work. My “don’t mention the war” (Faulty Towers) attitude soon disappeared to make space for a more laid back attitude. Some English people where still biased towards Germans but once they got to know me it did not matter.

It was great to have such a deep insight into the English and the British culture. I even staid one month longer to be able to take the Cambridge Proficiency Exam (CPE). I think it is crucial to stay in a country to understand its culture and learn the language properly. I do not know how much I improved my English but my stay was worthwhile for the cultural aspect alone. I did not figure out if I really want to become a teacher because I did not really do the work of a teacher but I found it pleasant to work together with young students. I really felt at home in Bath and I can easily imagine living there. It was a great year in which I grew personally and I enjoyed every bit of it.