The IBC at University Nonntal

Yesterday we went to visit PLUS University, known as Unipark. An English lecturer called Tom had invited us. The students were on mid-term break, but we saw a few because they were having exams.

Tom had an amazing programme planned for us. First of all, we went in this very big lecture hall, and we were allowed to sit down, while Tom was explaining how things work at university.

After that, Tom took us to the library. It was a huge, super cosy, amazing library.  We had never seen such a big library in our entire lives. It was like there was a life supply of books in there.

When we got to the linguistic department, we went into the language lab. There we learnt a lot about languages. We found out that it was easier for young children to learn a language than for students. Students often find English hard to learn, particularly the ‘th’ and ‘l’ sounds. Tom gave us some very funny examples. It is important for students to know that there’s a difference between the sounds and the names of letters. We also learnt that babies could hear sounds in their mothers’ womb, and when babies are a few months old they start to imitate the sounds their parents make.

One exciting activity was using ultrasound to observe the movement of our tongues while saying different words and sentences in different languages. We noticed different movements for different languages and dialects.

The highlight of the morning was the scavenger hunt that Tom and Birgit had planned. It had a lot of unusual and fun tasks. One was to discover whose office had Halloween decorations in it, and why! We found out that it was because the professor’s birthday is on the 31^st of October, and that was the reason for Halloween decorations, even in winter and spring!
We had so much fun going up, down and around the whole building trying to solve the quiz. It felt like a race. Some of us discovered a secret passage.

We would like to say a big thanks to Tom and Birgit for such a special experience and for the treats – 3 baskets filled with fruit! Thank you!!!