Whilst I usually dislike studying at night, this year I consider my evening French classes to be the most enjoyable part of my week. The diversity of the students, whose nationalities include Argentinian, Iranian, German, Montenegrin and Chinese, contributes to the relaxed and informal atmosphere. The casual environment is laid-back enough that today the teacher twice attempted to steal my pencil case.
Allow me to digress to a brief description: I have a novelty pencil case in the shape of a ladybird. It was a gift for my 10th birthday, and has been in near constant use ever since. Yet in the years that I have owned it, it has never garnered as much attention as in the past few months. Numerous people have commented on it, including all three French teachers, and I am reliably informed that its shape is “une coccinelle”. I am resigned to its novelty value, but still somewhat bemused by its attraction to others.
Pencil cases aside, the lessons are rather enjoyable, particularly for their socialising aspect. Through them, I first met other Erasmus students, with whom I went to the beach in the first week, and continue to build friendships. However, I believe that a useful tool to further improve these friendships would be an English dictionary. It is certainly not easy to explain the differences between ‘infection’, ‘inflection’, and ‘injection’ without one! Nor to define words such as ‘invoke’ or ‘convocation’. Yet these are questions that arise during the course of our lessons. Whilst they are within my vocabulary, and I could use them correctly, I find that explaining the definition without aid rather difficult. I think I shall have to improve my ability to explain, in order to better handle these questions.
I guess that’s another skill I’m improving this year: communication and verbal ability.
Signing off,
Erasmus Who?
Erasmus Who's Blog 
And use a thesaurus because a thesaurus will give you alternatives whereas a dictionary will give an explanation. The alternatives demonstrate the nuances. For example, Roget’s thesaurus offers synonyms (and antonyms) for
infection: influence, transference, poison, or infection (which leads to ill-health, bad /failing/delicate health, delicacy, weakliness, infirmity, debility, weakness, seediness, mangineess, indispoition, cachexia and others)
inflection: it says see inflexion, which gives pronunciation. Pronunciation is along side words such as articulation, elocution, enunciation, inflexion, accentuation, stress, emphasis.
injection: could be insertion or therapy. Insertion gives forcible ingress, and alternatives for interjection. Therapy comes under remedy and covers shot, stab, jab.