My advice to a student from a foreign country would be to talk, talk, talk. Talk as much as you can to the people who live in the place that you are visiting. Talk to them and practice your new language skills. Learn all the funny sayings and different words that make up their language. Talking is the only way to really learn a language. Listen to people and talk to people. If you talk to people, you will also learn about their culture. I have a friend from Japan. His name is Nori. He often comes to see me just so that he can practice his English. He gets confused about words that sound the same, but mean different things. He was asking me about the words "see" and "sea." I explained to him that they do sound the same, but they are spelled differently, and they mean different things. Nori is learning some of our funny sayings from different people. One morning I asked him how he was, and he said "alive and kicking." Another morning when I asked him how he was, he said "so so." He laughs about these strange sayings that we use. He is learning English quickly because he spends a lot of time with English-speaking people. He likes to have lunch with my friends and me because we ask him questions about his homeland, and he answers us in English. If he doesn't understand our questions, we spend time explaining what we mean to him. He says that he enjoys being here. He thinks that the people are very friendly. We enjoy speaking to him and helping him to learn English. We also enjoy learning about his country. It is enjoyable for us to meet new people and learn about new things.
