Greetings from Austria

[Carj]

Hello,

I try to introduce myself in English. Sorry for the mistakes in advance!

I’m 30 years old, a female and I live in Austria.

I learned English in school and I have A-levels. Here in Austria it’s called “Matura”. I’m not sure, which verb and tense fits to A-levels. In (Austrian-)German you can use “Matura machen” for the process of absolving all the exams or “Matura haben” for having the certificate.

Anyway… Step-by-step my English skills fade away. I am able to read and understand English novels. It isn’t so difficult to understand the plot in the whole context. My listening skills depend on the speaker (Speed? Dialect?). The talking in movies is often to fast for me. My active English (writing, speaking) is very lousy. I have forgotten grammar and vocabularies and I never were good in pronunciation.

I’m not shy to speak or write English if it’s necessary even though I’m not good at it, but it is a little bit embarrassing. That’s why I want to refresh my skills. I try to read in English and discover interesting vocabularies in the text. I have started to repeat the words with a vocabulary training program in the internet. I’ll also try to listen to English texts in internet. But it’s really difficult to find possibilities for practicing the active skills.

I hope this discussion board can help me to improve my writing skills. I would really appreciate it if someone corrects me. Perhaps there is anybody, who is willing to exchange regularly with me?

I’m sure you can find a lot of mistakes in this short text although I used the orthography correction of Word, a Langenscheidt dictionary and some internet sites…

Have a nice day,
Carj from Austria (not my real name)

[Vesperus777]

Hi,

My name is Thomas I started learning German last Thursday! I'm afraid because German seems hard.

I hope to move to Vienna in about 8 months. I am 30. I taught English in South Korea for 3 years. Now I live in Arizona. I operate my own business.

Easy questions first.

What is your favorite food?
Which do you prefer, Tea or Coffee?
Which English word is the hardest to spell?
Which English word is the hardest to pronounce?

Ask me some questions too!

BTW-Have you tried listening to radio programs in English?