Melanie Placement Report

What is your name?
Melanie

What is the name of the company/institution you are working at?
Slattery – a Patissier and Chocolatier

What is your role in the organisation?
I’m got there a placement as a cake maker.

What are your daily tasks?
It’s around decorating cakes:
Spread sponge cakes with jam and butter cream,
Put Icing and marzipan on the cake,
Decorated cakes for all kind of events including inscription,
Created handmade chocolates.
I decorate the cakes how it is ordered or I get a picture of it and realise it.

What are your achievements so far?
Finding the right way to my placement because my placement is near Manchester and I have to change the busses. Another achievement is that I can conduct conversations with my colleague and that I understand the cake order.

What were the challenges and how did you manage them?
The language, but I speak a lot with locals to improve my English.

What are your plans for the rest of the placement to get the most out of it?
To speak more to my colleagues.

How is your cooperation with colleagues and management in your placement organisation?
I have good conversations 8including to use body language) with my colleagues about baking cakes in the UK and in Germany.

How do you experience to speak another language at work?
It’s hard to learn a new language but my colleagues support me very much, They show me all and explain a lot of things. They are very patient with me.

Nanette Placement Report

What is your name?
Nanette

What is the name of the company/institution you are working at?
Towneley Hall

What are your daily tasks?
Set up tables with cups and sauces
Washing up, hooving
Serve tea, coffee and mince pies to guests
Prepare events
Spend time with school classes

What are your achievements so far?
I understand the sense of sentences people tell me. I overcame my fear to speak English and to ask people if I have any questions.

What were the challenges and how did you manage them?
To understand elder people. I’m always niece and smile although I don’t understand and I ask them to repeat it.

How is your cooperation with colleagues and management in your placement organisation?
It’s great! My colleagues are very nice and friendly. They help me to understand the guests. They take care of me and bring me soup to work and tell me about their life.

How do you experience to speak another language?
It’s a strange situation because I sometimes feel like I don’t have enough vocabulary especially the right words (expressions) to say what I want to say or what I want to know.

What have you learned so far?
How beautiful it is to be at home with my friends and family. That I would never live in England.

Paul Placement Report

What is your name?

Paul

What is the name of the company you are working at?

Forshaws BMW & MINI Specialist

What is your role in the organisation?

Volunteer as a Car mechanic

What are your daily Tasks?

I carry out service checks, brake- pads – and – disc – change as well as health checks.
I help my colleagues to work on the engines and sometimes I work with them on very expensive cars

What are your achievements so far?

I have improved my English language. I have learnt a lot about working in England. I have had a view in to the English culture. I have met a lot of different people.

What were the challenges and how did you manage them?

In the first few weeks I had a big problem with understanding and speaking the English language. I managed to understand it more by learning the body language and lots of new vocabulary.

What are your plans for the rest of the placement to get the most out of it?

I want to have a better understanding of the English language. I hope that I can speak better English. Better understanding of the English working way.

How is your cooperation with colleagues and the management in your placement organization?

Sometimes it is really hard to understand the Lancashire accent. But with time it will get better. My colleagues there are very friendly and helpful. They help me with speaking the right sentences.

How do you experience to speak another language at work ?

At the beginning it was really hard. But then you learn to understand a lot more, if you use the body language and learn a lots of vocabulary. Now I think that the work is not a problem anymore.

Tanja Placement Report

What is your name?
My name is Tanja

What is the name of the company/institution you are working at?
The name of the institution where I work is Towneley House (a residential home).

What is your role in this organisation?
There I’m working as a trainee for occupational therapy.

What are your daily tasks?
My daily tasks were the following:
Make tea for the residents,
Talk to the residents,
Help in the kitchen,
Doing occupations with the residents (bake, art and handicrtafts, talks).

What are your achievements so far?
I had a lot of achievements during the last 4 weeks. The language was the biggest part. I think that I improved my English skills, I understand and speak better English because of this experience here in the UK. I never worked with residents before – so I learned a lot about how to work with residents.

What were the challenges and how did you manage them?
The language was a big challenge for me. But it’s getting better and better when I speak with the residents or other people. The trips we made in our leisure time were a challenge too, like to drive with the correct bus or tube.

What are your plans for the rest of the placement to get the most out of it?
I would like to get to know the residents better and also the staff. Everyday I want to go in an good mood to work. I want to enjoy the last days with the people in the house. I would like to talk a lot in English so that I can further improve my English.

How is your cooperation with colleagues and management in your placement organisation?
The cooperation is very good. If anyone has got problems, they talk to each other. There is a good relationship between staff and management. Everyone is friendly and polite. I never saw a situation of argument. I really felt well in this placement.

How do you experience to speak another language at work?
The first time it was a little bit unaccustomed to speak another language. But after the first two weeks it was normal to speak English. Now I don’t think a lot about the words, I just start to speak.

What have you learned so far?
I learned a lot about the northern English accent. It is really difficult to understand the people. I also learned something about the British life. For example when you cross the street, you should first look right and when left. There are a lot of differences between the UK and Germany like the English breakfast with eggs, toast, beans and sausages.

Thomas Placement Report

What is your name?
My name is Thomas

What is the name of the company/institution you are working at?
Towneley Park City Learning Centre

What is your role in the organisation?
I’m a stuff for media technology.

What are your daily tasks?
Every day is different. My main tasks are web design, video editing and image editing. I also do the set up for events/meetings in and outside the CLC and filming.

What are your achievements so far?
I got the northern accent a bit better. I worked at a couple of events/meetings around Lancashire. I fixed the CLC website. I did filming and video editing for a project from the “Princes trust”.

What were the challenges and how did you manage them?
I had to do some interviews for a DVD. So I prepared questions. I keep talking to get the northern accent and the industrial English.

What are your plans for the rest of the placement to get the most out of it?
I don’t have a real plan but I know there will be a lot to do. I’ll create a new design for the website. I’ll also get few more video projects.

How is your cooperation with colleagues and management in your placement organisation?
All my colleagues are really friendly. I learn a lot from them and learn from me as well, sometimes.

How do you experience to speak another language at work?
It’s not that easy but I think I’m doing well. My English is getting better every nday.

What have you learnt so far?
I learnt about the English way of working. It’s much relaxer than in Germany. I learnt about video editing.

Anna Placement report

What is your name?
Anna

What is the name of the company you are working at?
Offshoots Permaculture Project

What is your role in the organisation?
I am a volunteer at Offshoots and work closely together with the site manager and other volunteers.

What are your daily tasks?
My tasks are very weather dependent due to the facts that Offshoots is a community garden, Horticultural work like weeding, sieving compost or watering plants are as well part of my daily tasks as helping to deliver environmental workshops to school and college groups, volunteers and community groups. I´m involved in coordinating and supervising volunteers and support the site manager with applications for fundings for new projects. So I do both brain work and practical work.

What are your achievements so far?
I realised that my language improved because I´m able to talk fluently with English people and I even understand strong Lancashire accent. I learnt really much about managing a project like Offshoots, but also small things that are important in gardens or in social behaviour. I ran my own workshop and made friends at Offshoots.

What were the challenges and how did you manage them?
Of course I struggled with the English language at the beginning of my adventure here in England, but I didn’t hesitate to speak and listened carefully. I think my biggest challenge was to slow down a little bit. The English way of working is less fast than in Germany and it took some time to adapt. But finally I managed to relax a little bit and I am now fully aware of my position and value in Offshoots.

What are your plans for the rest of the placement to get the most out of it?
I will work as good as possible and try to find something, a workshop or an improvement or something, that reminds the volunteers and staff from Offshoots that I have been there after I left. I want to get stronger involved into funding applications to learn how to write them and in the end I want to be able to write a formal text in English without problems.

How is your cooperation with colleagues and management in your placement organisation?
The site manager as well as the Offshoots staff and the volunteers work closely together with me. We get along really well and have fun with each other. They know that they can rely on me and I know I can rely on them. Some of them are friends now.

How do you experience to speak another language at work?
Sometimes I struggle with explaining interesting facts about plants, traditions or working methods so that the English language seems to be a barrier. But in normal case the person I speak to is patient enough and helpful so that I can manage to say what I wanted to say. I really enjoy speaking English.

What have you learnt so far?
I learnt that I´m quite good in teaching children. I learnt that it seems to be difficult for teenagers from Burnley to get in contact with me. I learnt how to clean a chainsaw and build it together again afterwards. I learnt how to light a fire. I learnt that it is good to stay calm in events of fire at site, frozen pipes or simply heavy workload. And I learnt that I really love England and that I want to stay here.

Interview with Phill Dewhurst

1. Are you a commercial or charitable organisation?
Charity Organisation

2. What are the aims and objectives of your organisation?
From the Management Agreement Offshoots Permaculture Project:
The Offshoots Project shall be managed to fulfil the following objectives:
To provide a learning environment for local people, promoting sustainable practices.
To create demonstration gardens to promote sustainable land and resource management.
To encourage local action by making skills, produce and tool loan available through Burnley LET System.
To provide therapeutic gardening work for Greenspace volunteers.
To work co-operatively with other environmental projects in East Lancashire.
To create the smallest possible ecological footprint whilst achieving these aims projects.

3. What are you offering?
Opportunity to understand Permaculture Principles.
Help to deliver Permaculture Project in a Permaculture Garden Site

4. What kind of jobs/placements can young people do at your organisation?
- Horticulture
- Woodworking
- Beekeeping
→All depending upon season

5. What kind of experience did you make with having a foreign student in your organisation?
Benefited enormously
In case of good level English speaker no problem.
With low level English speaker more or less difficult, because needs more attention and help (translation) → fluency in English required.