My language biography - Background information

Presentation of the learner

My name is Anna.
I am 21 years old.
I was born in the Czech Republic.
I use the following languages actively or passively:

• at home: Czech
• with friends: Czech, English
• at school: Czech, English

I have learned or have started to learn the following other languages outside school (travel, visits, exchanges etc.): during my stay in Spain for Erasmus I learned basics of Spanish. 

I learned or have been learning the following languages at school or in language classes:

• English - since my 9 years till nowadays
• Spanish - since my 15 years (classes at secondary school for 4 years)

How I use my languages

I was born in the Czech Republic, all my family members come from Czech Republic which measn that my language first was czech. So with my family and most of the frineds I speak only czech. But I also understand very well slovak as this language has many similarities with czech. 

At my 4th grade at Primary school I started to learn English as well. But till that time I had almost no contact with English. However English language was used only in my English classes, the rest of the classes were in czech. At the beginning it was easy for me as I learned new words but as time went by I started to have problems with English. It was difficulut for me to learn when I didn´t have any contact with English beside my classes. 

When I enrolled at secondary school at the age of 15 I had more English lessons. Beside normal English lessons I also had English conversation lesson, which helped me a lot with improving my speaking skills. So step by step I improved my English skills. During the four years on the secondary school I had also several opportunities to travel abroad and practice my English in real life. Apart from English, I had to chose one more language to learn at my grammar school. I chosed Spanish, becuase I always liked this language and because it is definitely very useful. My relationship with Spanish was complicated, because I really liked this language, I wanted to learn it, but I had pretty bad teacher who made these lessons very boring. 

When I enrolled to university, my Spanish classes stopped but still I had some cumpolsory English. I started use English still more and more. Nowadays I am able to study in English, I feel really confident in that langauge. I read books in English, watch TV and films, when I search on the Internet I also use maily English language. As for the Spanish, since I am in Spain I learned more, but still I am not fluent at all. But in the future I want to improve this language as well.