Describing myself as a language learner

Our first written homework for the English course was a letter describing ourselves as language learners - our motivation to choose English, our strenghts and weaknesses and so on. We got back the correction of this first piece of homework today. You could tell from all the shocked and desperate faces that the marks weren't too great. In order to learn from our mistakes, we have to rewrite our letters as a homework. The following (everything written in italics) is my "improved" version:

Dear Fiona,

I decided to study English at the Department of Translation because, even though languages like Russian and Chinese are catching up, English is still the basis for most intercultural communication. Besides, apart from German, it is the language I have known longest.

My grandmother used to teach me English every other day when I was only in kindergarten. Eventually, my knowledge surpassed hers, but I was eager to continue learning - once I even bugged my aunt until she let me read the letters she had received from her American pen pal! I think this natural curiosity, in connection with a certain amount of stubbornness, is one of my biggest strengths when it comes to language learning. Due to these qualities I will always keep working on a task until I am fully happy with the result. I am also rather good at self-motivation so I am unlikely to procrastinate when it comes to doing my work.

Unfortunately, I am a bit of a perfectionist. I therefore tend to take criticism very personally, which is definitely one of my weaknesses when it comes to learning in general. An aspect of language learning which I am not yet content with is my lack of knowledge about grammar rules. Maybe as a result of having learnt English at such an early age, when grammar rules did not matter much, I rely on my intuition too often. I am already working on these grammar issues, though, by doing a great deal of online exercises that come with explanations at the end.

Best regards,

Sarah Maria Edelsbrunner

First of all, I am happy that I didn't make any obvious spelling mistakes. These are often easy to prevent by reading the printout carefully, but sometimes we are too lazy to do so. 

• One of my biggest problems was cohesion. Sometimes there was no connection between one sentence and the next and other times it was not clear what my "its" and "thats" were referring to. I know now that I should read more on cohesion and theme/rheme and I will be careful to connect my sentences properly in the writing part of the first Progress Check.
  
  
• I should also try not to use words that are too informal and use synoyms for words such as "a lot".
  
  
• Sometimes I used sentence structures and words that sounded "too German", especially when I tried to express the meaning of the German word "schon".

Naturally, one could find even more things to criticize but I think it will be more effective to pick out these three main causes of mistakes and make sure to avoid them in the future.