How about YOUR knowledge in English?

[Hoppla-Daisy]

My turn: When I enrolled my daughter for secondary school some time ago we both visited the English class of my first English teacher. She was one of my favourite teachers ever and it was a mere pleasure to be there and listen to her again.

English was my first love... and it will be .... oops, sorry. We had so much fun and read a lot of brilliant books through the years. I began to watch Sky Channel ( @Bratze). BFBS, the British forces broadcast, was one of my favourite radio stations. And I loved that accent as if you spoke with a plum in your mouth . During the years I never lost my love for this language. Of course, it was one of my Abitur subjects. After my final exams I packed my bags and said goodbye to my parents for one year. London was my destination and I started working for a family of 4 people as Au-Pair resp. Nanny. By the way, when arriving at Victoria Station I had to find a taxi to take me to West Ealing. I thought my English would be quite good, but on my arrival in West Ealing, which was about a 45 minutes drive, I was desillusionated. Today I would rate the taxi driver's English as average, just normal. But back then I was hopelessly frustrated. I hardly understood a f***ing word he said!!! The family was ok (which would change within a short while) and encouraged me not to give up. Fortunately there was a cleaning lady so I had some spare time for my studies. I enrolled for a class called "English for Foreigners" at Hounslow Borough College in Southwest London and passed two exams of Cambridge University. I got to know so many people with lots of different accents, so that in the end nobody could really say my nationality. "I have absolutely no idea where you actually come from. But this place must be somewhere in a part of England completely unknown so far. Sometimes it's Canadian, American, Australian, Scottisch or Irish accent. Ok, where are you from?" "From Germany" "Never! Tell me, where is this f***ing town on the map?"

Back in Germany I improved my English during an apprenticeship and finished as Bilingual Secretary. My teacher was a native speaker and was even more British than all Brits I had known before . We were only 2 students and so we really learned a lot.

I really hope that Helena will turn out being anglophilic too

[LaTraviata]

English was my first language at school but as soon as I learned french and latin it was a minor matter, french was much more interesting and my teacher at latin was that great that I still love it.

When I finished school, I still wanted to learn a lot in english; mine's wasn't ameliorated during the least two years - because I cancelled the english profile, in germany formally known as "LK" and switched to the french classes – since that day I only had three classes of english a week.

After reaching my a-level I assigned myself a new task - to pass the toefl with a good score, also in consideration of my application at an university, which one required the toefl.

To cut a long story short, I passed this exam quite good with an unsuspectedly great score - thanks to the baron's publishing house and the toefl vocabulary trainer.

Afterwards I stayed in Chile and within the first weeks I nearly did not understand a dreg of spanish - thanks god that my host mom's family moved to chile generations afore and all of them spoke native british english and the lack of communication was subjugated . I also learned spanish with this new approach: in chile nearly all hollywood movies and “us trash tv stuff” and also my beloved new seasons of grey’s anatomy and emergency room come up in the original with spanish subtitles. So I got in contact with both languages and learned spanish while wathing tv . Also my greatest disgrace concerning wrong vocabulary during the time in chile was explained in english – without I never understood what I had told them in that moment… Well the unstrained story:
Diego, my host dad, asked me after about ten days in chile what new words I know and use. Me, not well informed about the fact that youth’s spanish and normal castellano are that different like day and night, answered “pal pico” – for me a word, like a filler, incessantly heard in every conversation within my circle of friends. All of them – yeah, uncle manolito invited us to have dinner with him and the whole, tremendous family in one of the city’s finest restaurants – blushed and started laughing and I wondered why! After they calmed down, my host sister Magdalena told me that “pal pico” means to the older generation the same like in eglish “suck the dick”… first day I wished my self a spontaneous execution overthere...

Nowadays I do read a lot in english and other foreign languages and that’s the matter of my question: Shouldn’t we offer a panel with reviews of books (medical and non-medical)?

[Hoppla-Daisy]

*giggle* Just a short anecdote: I strolled along with an Irish friend through Camden Lock Market on a Saturday morning. It was absolutely crowded and all of a sudden I asked him what the word "cunt" actually meant. He was so damn embarrased, people looked at me, looked at him.... he finally said: Gabi, I will explain it later to you, ok?

[McBeal]

As my nickname is American, I think I will have to tell you about my eyperiences with the English language.
Like most of you I started learning English in class 5 at the age of ten. I was lucky, because my teacher in the first years was a native speaker who came from South Africa. So she sometimes did not only teach us English but we also taught her German.
For the last two years at school I had a German teacher, who listened to us very carefully and thoroughly and who only wanted us to use Bristish English - written and spoken. On Friday mornings he recorded the CNN news at 5 am and we watched them at school at 9. That was great, because it was not easy to understand the news, but if you had seen the German news the evening before you knew most of the facts and could pick up a lot.

In the summer holidays after year ten and twelve at school I also went on language trips to Malta and Dublin. As I lived in families and there and was on half borad, I had to talk English not only during classes, but also when we had breakfast and supper. In enjoyed these holidays very much, especially the second on in Dublin (Malta was too hot for me after two weeks). In Dublin, I started reading novels and criminal stories in English - I was very happy that I understood them, because I love the books by Elizabeth George and from that day on, I could read the new ones before they were published in German.

The first years at university, there was nearly no use of the English language. But when I started with the my dissertation, I had to read many English texts. This was not easy at the beginning, because I had not used my English for years.

At the end of 2005 I decided to spend one month of clinical training in Great Britain or the Republic of Ireland. Lucky me, there were people who helped me to write the letter and my CV. In the end, I went to Douglas, Isle of Man, for one month in the summer of 2006 and did a training in Paediatrics. From the first day on, I could nearly understand everything the doctors and nurses told me - I only had some problems with the Indian people's accent. But it was very, very hard for me to talk to them myself. It took me a long time to put a sentence together in my head and when I finally had done this, the situation was over. This improved over the weeks and on my last days I did not think about what I wanted to say before I said it: the sentences were not always right in their grammtical structures, but everybody understood what I wanted to say and that was the main thing.

At the moment, I need my English to read more and more texts for my dissertation, but after the month on the Isle of Man this is much easier for me. And now, I am really, really, really looking forward to the 21st of July when I will buy and read the seventh and last "Harry Potter"!!!!

Best Wishes,
Ally McBeal

[Dr. Pschy]

I`ve been learning English at school for about 9 years, from class 5 till final exam. Trying to improve my skills, in 2001 I decided to spend a whole summer in Calfornia, visiting all the great places like San Diego, Los Angeles (+ Orange County,...), San Franciso and even Las Vegas and Tijuana. It was a great time, linked to experience and challenge.

After my internal subjects this spring, I´m going to apply for "applied medical englisch". Hope I will be taken...