For the first few weeks of my arrival in Hasselt, I was proud to tell people that I felt at home in Hasselt since almost everyone is so friendly and speaks very good English. However, within my second month, I started to realize that I was struggling with communicating my thoughts while talking or discussing with other people even the fact that I had kept learning English for more than 20 years and taught this language for five years before I arrived.
This struggle took place due to the fact that in my previous workplace, I barely spoke English in the staffroom with my Cambodian co-workers after leaving my classroom by believing that my English was really good enough already and not wanting to show off my very good English accent to them. On the contrary, I would hang around with expatriate teachers because it was the only opportunity for me to practice my English speaking skills with native speakers as well as my listening skills. Nonetheless, without spending time talking with other Cambodian co-works in English and spending time with expatriate teachers after leaving the workplace means I was able to communicate my thoughts well only in some circumstances.
Upon realizing my issue, I started to learn to communicate my thoughts alone for almost two hours each day by answering questions from the IELTS speaking test I printed and brought with and when I had someone to speak with in English, I always took that opportunity to do so without any hesitation.
Therefore, before you come here, please make an effort to learn to communicate your thoughts with anyone you can find or yourself because you will definitely need to make yourself understood in any circumstances in English without having to use our Khmer language to help at all.