Learn a second language

I grew up in a region with its own dialect, which I learnt at school from a very early age and, even though I never speak that dialect, I believe that learning a second language almost at the same time as I was learning my mother tongue helped me to be more open to other languages.

However, I started studying English late in life. I was 12 years old when I attended my first English class at school and, even though I had English lessons for the rest of my education, I can now see how poor those lessons were, concentrating too much on vocabulary and irregular verbs and flagrantly ignoring grammar, writing, pronunciation and all the things that matter. Once outside the education system, I tried to improve my skills by traveling to England as often as I could and having some good English pen pals, but I’ve never studied it seriously and that’s why to this day I’m awfully ashamed of my English.

I like to speak properly, to find the exact words to phrase what I want to say. I am not able to do this in English but it’s never too late, so I keep trying and working on it.