I was no stranger to English, but the difference between examinations and daily use was much bigger than I could ever imagine. As a non-native speaker, I was only able to catch up 50%-60% in the beginning. My vocabulary was not enough at all. We have so many foreign students and teachers here. To communicate with them was a real challenge.

But there is no reason to worry. Language is all about environment and practicing. With everyone’s encouragement and help, I started opening my month very quickly. In 3 months’ time I was comfortably talking to our foreign principal on my own.

Of course you must enlarge your vocabulary, and to me the best tool is TOEFL.

There is a lot of freedom in an international school class. Teachers and students are equal, questions and opinions are respected and encouraged, and can be shared any time you want.

Students are all equal with each other, no privilege will be given just because you have higher test scores. At first I was a little aggressive and didn’t like to raise my hand before answering questions. In no time I started to learn about respecting my classmates’ thoughts and opportunities.

Being a resident student, I also got to know many higher graders, with whom I often exchange my ideas and experience. They way they think and act are more international, and have been very helpful to my adapting. Once I had a disagreement with my dorm mate. Instead of protecting any of us, my upperclass friends reasonaly talked us through and helped us out. It was a lot of ‘big-brotherhood’.

Traditionally, schools only measured students with their test scores. But in an international school, a good personality is a lot more important. Everyone cares about the ability to communicate and express. Usually in a public school, bookworms are the best students. But this is not the case in international schools.

Over here a very imporant quality is independent learning. Teachers won’t go after you with textbooks in their hands. Learning is one’s own mission, and every student must learn to be responsible to their own academic career and life.  Typically, our teacher would give us a topic, and leave it to us to choose our own research orientation, to search necessary knowledge, and to come up with and demonstrate our conclusions. It may take some time for new starters to get used to this. But trust me, you will end up loving it, for you can finally choose your own field of study.