Anticipation? Reality! I was invited to several business meetings last week to discuss some issues about perspectives of further development of our IT-system. My participation in this project is still unclear so the situation was a bit odd. I was interviewed about current circumstances and some details refer to principles of work in our department. After the meetings, one of my colleagues asked me to give an impression of the happening situation in English. To be honest, writing business letters in English isn't one of my strong abilities, especially when I have to impress my indignation and moreover frustration about the topic. Anyway, I managed to write a letter with some unpleasant sentences in more or less acceptable form. I wrote the way as I usually write in Russian. But, it's very difficult to criticize someone who isn't right when he only speaks English and I can't express all my emotions. I guessed that the letter wasn't going to be the perfect one. Just imagine, when you are very annoyed about the problem and someone asks you to write ASAP about this problem in language that you know at a very intermediate level. Eventually, after I had sent the report I asked to correct it here. And today I've got ... not a correction, but just big reply with explanations about my ability to write that kind of letters. It was shattering and smashing! I thanked the author for his close attention and honesty! I was really very impressed to get such huge proper kick and now I'm gathering strength to write this text here. Yes, it's supposed that I have to know English better, much better in my situation, but I don't know. But I know that I'm going to do the best to improve my English!

The short email to my friend. Yes, it's for you! Hi, an unknown native speaker, who "always" correct all my writing works. I know that you are not the one. There are a lot of you. Not as much one could expect, but nearly enough to hope that you exist and are reading this right now. It’s just quick note to say THANK YOU for all your hard work you doing for me (and us). I don’t know who are you and where are you from, nevertheless I see you manage to find time for a such rewarding job like this. Maybe it’s not so difficult for you (maybe is), but you even can’t imagine how important all this improved texts for me. Thank you so much and I hope you are going to be here today and forever to do me that a big favour. I was going to write some little texts in English every day and post here but it turned out a bit difficult to realise it in fact. Today I started the next block in my textbook and I’ve got tasks from there to write an introduction of myself and write a letter to friend. Actually, this is the letter to a friend because only the friend could help! Could help me to improve my English! All the best to you, your family and your friends. P.S.: Especially curious that this text hasn't been checked during the whole week, in spite of it was read more than 30 times. So, I had to post it again...

A report about the place This is a short report about the place I'm now. There are lots of old 5-floor houses, which were built in the middle of the previous century. Nearly half of them renovated, the others are quite run-down. The area is green in whole. Streets have being cleaned every day. As far as public transport in this area was concerned, very few could complain about it. There are a lot of buses, trolley buses, trams and taxi going about. In terms of entertainment, there are two cinemas, some sports clubs, and open air sports playgrounds for children and adults. But most of them are rarely used. As far as facilities for young people are concerned, more could be done. There are only a limited numbers of things for teenagers to do. As result, the main problem of the area is the only free-time activity for them is simply hanging out in the street. P.S.: I was trying to use some text patterns, so the style here a bit odd. I know that :) P.P.S.: There are some of the uncorrected notebook entries here written by me. I'll very appreciate if you could correct them too. THANK YOU!

It’s my attempt to write a request Dear Sir or Madam, I'm going to make a reservation for three days at your hotel and I was wondering if you could give me some extra information as quickly as you can. Is where any chance to check in before midday as my flight gets in at 5.30 a.m. and I'll be at the hotel at 8.00 or maybe even earlier. As far as I know, there is a parking near the hotel. Is there any chance to use it for free while I'm there? Could you give me a favour and let me know whether you have wi-fi in the rooms or just at the reception as it was during my previous visit. Do you think I could extend my staying if I won't manage to sort out all my issues in three days? By the way, I was wondering if it's possible to reserve the same room as last time, as I liked the balcony that looks out over the river. It was the wonderful view. Is where any way to get information whether everything is OK as soon as possible otherwise I would need to make the other reservation. Yours faithfully, Sergey.

Introducing myself Let me tell a bit about myself. My name is Sergey. I’m 43 year old. I’m from Moscow, capital of Russia. I’m married. I live with with my wife and 16-year-old son. I studied math at university. I graduated nearly 20 years ago and I’ve been working in IT area since then. I work for a large Telecom company. I’m keen on studying English at the moment. I use to go out a lot in past, but I prefer to stay in nowadays and to read a book or to do some exercises in English. I’m quite like watching movies and serials. I prefer a thrillers, horror and comedy movies. As well as, I’m also really love to listening music. I don’t have a favourite band but I like looking for some new music. I prefer electronic, pop and rock music. I’m not really into sport as a main part of my life. But I like some kind of it. As well as I prefer skiing and skating in the winter, I love also cycling and rollerblading in the summer. I’d be nice to meet some new friends. I’m sure we’ll have a lot in common.

My grammar exercises I'm so grateful when you're correcting my texts! If you see something absolutely wrong, please don't hesitate and correct it significantly! It's important not only to see my own mistakes, but to pick up extra phrases that I still don't know. I'm not sure whether it's important or not to learn English grammar in addition to working on my Student's Textbooks. There are different opinions concerning the studying grammar apart from just using language. I mean right studying grammar form special books. I've still had been confusing a lot of grammar rules in spite of understanding them separately from using them in spoken or written language. For instance, I've taken some grammar books and I've started exploring them carefully in one exact theme, that is very uneasy for me, not only to use, but to understand either. It's about subjunctives. The conditional sentences have always been for me incredibly incomprehensible. When I read a rule of how to use both clauses of conditional sentence I see how to construct them correctly. But as I begin writing or especially speaking, I absolutely forgot about that rules or I have to take a long pause to concentrate on guessing of type of condition which I need to use right now. I must put together all my knowledge about it but it takes time and it's so boring to speak that way. Even worse, eventually, it comes with mistakes or completely wrong. So I need to do more grammar exercises and I think where isn't another way to make my English grammatically at least acceptable if not perfect. I've spent 40 minutes. I think it's too much. But if do it faster, it'll be much worse :)

Day two. Here I go again! I’ve done some exercises for my vocabulary today. Not so much, but I trained some words and collocations. I’ve still have been exploring on-line version of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. I signed up on trial period which ends in 10 days and I have to decide whether this monolingual dictionary valuable for me or not yet at my current level. I was going to buy a paper version of any handy dictionary and most people was telling me the Longman is the best. Some of them recommended to compare it with Oxford Dictionary for Advanced Learner. So I examine both of them occasionally every time I need to look up an unknown word. I prefer to not distract on several sources but I still haven’t made a right choice. I’m going to take one of them as main dictionary in future. Also I’ve written a 20 minutes dictation in English. I suppose it’s worthwhile exercise to perfect my listening ability. I did it with help of a special software that able to divide an audio into short pieces and allow to play them consequently by demand. This text has been written in 25 minutes. I know it’s a huge amount of time but it’s my current pace of writing. I need to get it faster and moreover better. I’ll try next time!

The writing marathon. Day one. Day one! Let’s go! I know that I need a lot of practice for developing my writing skill. It’s one of two most important types of exercises to improve language and to activate my vocabulary. I see that my writing English is too simple. I don’t use grammar properly and I don’t use nothing from advanced vocabulary. So I must write more and have to do it everyday. Indeed, situation is awful, I’ve bee studying for so long and my English is still so primitive. I don’t know how to write better. I was already going to write everyday but couldn’t manage to realise this idea. By this text I’m going to start my writing marathon from today to the next 42 days. That’s very important decision for me. I understand that it wouldn’t be easy. Besides, my spoken English isn’t better than my written English. But it’s another sad story. And I’m going to sort out that problem either! I’ve spent 20 minutes to write this, but without looking at dictionary at all - just to fix my the very beginning point. Wish me luck! May the force be with me!