As you can see in my profile, I'm writing from Italy.
I was born and I live in a little city in the Tuscany country and Italian is my first language.
When I was a child, I studied French (ok, in my middle school this was the only foreign language that I could learn) and, as a child and because the French is latin-based as the Italian, it was simple for me to learn it.
Le chat est sur la table.
Le chien est sous la table.
When I was 13/14 years old and I decided about the High School I chose to learn English, because I really really wanted to be an astronautical engineer (I read Asimov and watched Star Trek ^_^ ) and I thought that English was better then French for this job.
The cat is on the table.
The dog is under the table.
Well, my English teacher rejected me because I had some problems with grammar and speaking the language. She said me "You have to improve your English, so you can interact with the rest of the world!" and she gave me a few tips:
- think in English!
- read in English!
- marry a man who speack English better then you! (it's a joke ^_^ )
It was the 80s and we couldn't use the net to search sources or courses or movies in English.
I'm not an engineer (not because the English :P ), but my teacher was agree. Now I'm an adult and I can read in French, English and Spanish, It's still difficult for me to speak and write correctly, but now I'm feeling connected to the world!
At now, my tips to improve your foreign languages are:
- think in the languages
- read in the languages
- watch movies in the languages (you can watch it with subtitles)
- don't be shy and speack in the languages
- travel, travel and travel again
Time to sleep for me, 'night 'night ^_^