Karl Franzens Universität Graz (KFUNIGRAZ)

I was surprised about my ability to speak German. I hadn´t expected to cope that well. At the begin I was a little shy and was affraid to make mistakes but that changed very quickly. I had a lot of contacts with austrian students and therefore I was obliged to speak German all the time. I also had contacts with Englishmen and Frenchmen but we spoke German most of the time. I learned a lot of new expressions and words.

I was fluent in German before coming to Austria, but had not had to deal with the thick difficult style often used in academic literature here, which meant reading texts and writing papers took me longer than it does in Englad. It was not always easy for me to understand the Styrian dialect.

I found that being here for the year was very good for improving my german, because I was exposed to it all the time. It is always a problem for english speakers however that a lot of people want to speak english with you. You just have to be persistent and speak german whenever possible.

The big problem in Graz is the austrian "Dialekt". It's really hard to understand. Most of the professors speak standard german but many students don't and I had trouble to understand them when they made their presentations. Even the Germans complained about it...

THe problem I found was that all Austrians spoke very good english and that usually when I spoke in german to them I was answered in english.This was quite an annoying thing and I really had to persist in speaking german even when I was answered in english.

At the beginning the local dialect was a bit difficult to understand but I had an Austrian German course at the uni and it became understandable. With the Erasmus students I used only (Erasmus)German - except native English speaking friends but later they wanted to use German as well!