We are french students and we participate in the COCO (COventry / COlmar) project 2017, in this project we did many things like making videos, participating in interviews and chatting with the english students using Whatsapp or even Cultura Forums.

Colmar is located in Alsace, France, near Germany and Coventry is right in the center of England, near Notthingham.

We're one group of five students consisting of Bryan which is myself, Léo, Quentin, Simon and Valentin. The english group is consisting of Kazadi, Lulia, Charlotte and Stefania. We learned a lot about english way of life, we talked about a lot of things not only school related topics and we're a bit more fluent in english.

For the video we made, we had to introduce the Coventry group to our University by filming and talking about it, then we had to go around and film our city, Simon did it with his drone and it looks pretty nice.

In my opinion i think that our video was better because we did jokes and drone scenes even though their city is way better than ours. the sound was pretty bad on their video aswell.

From their video we basically learned that they have a beautiful cathedral and that they're studying international relationship.

We had to make two different questionnaires on two topics : food, and films. And Coventry's students had to answer them.

By seeing the answers and similarities we can already say that the way of life is only a tiny bit different. They have different food habits especially at breakfast, but they like French food especially the desserts.

For films is similar they’ve seen French films like “ Intouchables” and we’ve seen English films like “Interstellar”.

Her typically breakfast is with bacon, eggs and beans. It’s a big difference cus in France we eat a lot of bread and pastries like “croissants”.

But they eat in same fast food like our “McDonald’s”, “KFC”. And they looks same films like “Conjuring”.

Culture is the difference between two countries like traditions food, and other things. It’s nice to know a lot countries because after you can travel in world easier.

Basically we had to prepare questions for their group to answer which they did. We picked two subjects, one was Food and the other one was Movies, 5 questions for each theme. They answered through Whatsapp.

Questions about food and answers:

What do you eat in a typical english breakfast:

Un petit-déjeuner anglais typique est composé de saucisses, de bacon, de haricots, d'oeufs au plat et de pain grillé. Mais celà dépend des préférences de chaque personne, généralement nous mangeons du lait avec des chocapics.

What is the worst english food ?

Nous considérons que la pire nourriturz anglaise est le "boudin noir", il est généralement fabriqué à partir d'un mélange de cochons congelés de sang, de saindoux et de farine d'avoine

Do you guys eat oysters too ?

Non, nous ne mangeons pas d'huîtres.Nous n'aimons pas beaucoup les fruits de mer.

What do you think about french food ?

La nourriture française est vraiment bonne. Nous préférons les desserts français, comme les éclairs, la crème brûlée, les crêpes et les madeleines. Nous aimons le petit-déjeuné français comme les croissants, pain au chocolat et tarte.

Do you go to nando's ?

Nous allons parfois à Nando's parce que nous sommes étudiants, nous n'avons pas le temps de cuisiner, donc nous mangeons beaucoup dans les restaurants et les fast-foods. Nous aimons les Nando's parce que la nourriture est bonne et épicée, mais nous préférons d'autres endroits comme Pizza Hut, McDonald's et KFC.

 Questions about Movies.

What do you think is the worst english movie you've ever watched?

Les films anglais sont sympas et drôles mais il y en a qui ne sont pas très bons, comme "Shallow Grave", "Guest House Paradiso", "Notting Hill" ou "Love Actually". Certains d'entre nous qui ont vu ces films ne les ont pas appréciés.

What french movie did you see ?

Les films français que nous avons vus jusqu'à présent sont les intouchables, Amélie, Jeux d'enfants, Le Pianiste. Nous avons été impressionnés par ces films et nous les verrons avec plaisir.

What type of movie do you watch the most ?

Nous regardons beaucoup de films d'horreur comme "The Conjuring", "The Babadook", "Sinister", nous aimons aussi les films SF comme "interstellar", "Ex Machina", et "Inception". Nous aimons les films intéressants et complexes.

What is the most known/preferred french movie ?

Les films français que nous concidérons comme populaire sont "Asterix et Obélix : Mission cléopatre", "Les misérables" et "Amélie". Nous ne savons pas s'ils sont si populaires en France mais ceux-ci sont populaires ici.

Infortunately they didn't send their questions so we couldn't answer.

Coventry exchange 2017

• How do we perceive cultural differences regarding these topics ?

The cultural differences are not that big. We saw that they live almost the same way as us. Nevertheless, some things were interesting to know : the biggest example was the reaction of people when someone comes to them in the street.

• What do we think about these cultural differences ?

These have not been a barrier to intercultural exchanges as we are all european people. In fact the opinions are more differents than the culture.

• What are the effects of having prior ‘knowledge’ of the culture we are working with or interacting with ?

We are aware that the clichés are not so pronounced, but they are a little bit present in every culture : if they exist, it’s not for nothing. Since that, we were able to measure at what point these clichés exists.

• Were we surprised by any of the answers our partners gave (refer also to Culturaif applicable) ?

We found out that english people are more shy in the everyday life (for example in cultura : the cinema and the street)

• What perceptions do (or did?) we have of ‘culture’ ?

The culture is very present in our lives like our everyday habits, our eating habits and so on. As we said in the questions before, the stereotypes played a bi grole in our way of asking questions and talking with the englishs.

Ask me if you wanna see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBOerwDtOwA&feature=youtu.be