Learning English

on March 29, 2013. in Blablabla, Free time. A 2 minute read.

Most of my knowledge of the English language is self-taught. I had English classes in elementary school, but that was more or less singing "London bridge is falling down" and reciting a list of irregular verbs. I also had a semester of English in college, but that again consisted of reciting a list of irregular verbs (true, this time the list was longer) and reading and translating engineering texts. Good for learning how to read a technical manual, but not so much when it comes to having a conversation with other people. Other than that, it's all from computers, music, films, books.

My mom has an old dictionary that I used to read when I was a kid. I remember spending hours upon hours flipping through the pages, learning words, trying to figure out how to pronounce them. Guess I was a nerd already when I was only seven years old.

In the past few months Swizec was quite persistent with his nagging of how terrible my English is, especially when it comes down to the grammar, so I decided to do something about it.

I started taking private English classes.

I had my first hour and a half long lesson yesterday evening. I enjoyed it very much, had a lot of fun and already learned a thing or two (at least I think I did). I am taking the classes from an English teacher who also happens to be my friend. But, don't let the friendship fool you! She's not afraid off bashing me when I make a mistake: "Hold on Robert! That sentence doesn't make any sense!" (or something along those lines). And I think it is actually a good thing that we know each other from before as it is much easier to just start a random discussion and not just go through the textbook examples. All in all, very enjoyable classes and I know I will learn a lot from them.

And to show that I am really serious about this, I started another blog dedicated to writing called Magic of Writing. And yes, I am aware that that sounds something like a five year old would come up with, but then again writing is magical. There's not much there yet, but I already have a few ideas in my head that will hopefully find their way onto paper.