I attended the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University in Melbourne, Australia this spring as an exchange student. This experience has taught me so much in terms of my education, broadening my perspective and, of course, English. As an exchange student, I wanted to have as many experiences as I could. Australia, especially Melbourne, more than satisfied me compared to my expectations. I could meet people from all around the world. Even Uber drivers were so nice. People were always so friendly and seemed quite relaxed. It is a very different life style compared to Korea.
According to my Australian friend who came to Korea recently, Koreans are very helpful and kind but often shy. While living in Australia, I got over my shyness and opened up to new people, accepting a new culture and learning many things from them. Through people from all around the world, I could access new issues in their countries and broaden my perspectives. If you go on exchange, I highly recommend meeting as many people as you can and talk about their countries. You can learn a lot from their stories and broaden your perspectives.
RMIT University has a modern education system. The course consists of two parts: lectures and tutorials. In the lectures, professors would introduce the basic concepts and fundamentals of the subject, and in tutorials, teachers specify them trying to make sure everyone follows the class. There is also time to discuss assignments with professors. Tutorials were pretty helpful for me as I am not a native English speaker. I had difficulties in understanding in lectures but in tutorials I could ask for help from the teacher privately. I built good relationships with teachers and was able to ask them to be my referee for the internship program. Because all the lectures are recorded to enable students to watch them again online, I could catch what I missed in the lecture. It was hard for me to follow up lectures and writing essays but thanks to the system, I could learn at my own pace.
RMIT has different exam styles depending on the subject, but there are a few essays in every class. For the essay, a teacher prepares time for students to get ideas, to set structure and to answer questions. After a student submits an essay, they provide feedback specifically about grammar, spelling, structure, idea flow and the references. They also write compliments if they are satisfied by any part of essay. References are a very important part of RMIT coursework. At first, I was struggling with referencing as I have not been taught about it or studied under any professor who was strict about it. After I wrote a few essays, I was able to learn from the feedback. Now I feel so much better at writing than I did before. I know what was bad or what was wrong in my essay from the feedback. While I was studying at Chonnam National University, I do not think I learnt from essay feedbacks as I just got a mark from the whole semester not from a specific part. I have not gotten any feedback from teachers, I did not know what was wrong and I could not develop it. I think our university should implement a similar system in order to help its students develop their abilities.