Introducing myself

Hi itaki community!

I've been in this community for a few days now, but I've just been correcting another notebooks and helping others with their text written in Spanish. I think, it is time to write my own text in order to improve my writing skills and let me be helped by others. I used to use the dictionary a lot the dictionary when I write wrote a text in English and, using the Internet, search for these the sentences that I am not sure are well written, but now I am really trying to avoid this behavior, because in real life I am not going to be able to use any dictionary,- only my own English skills.

Well, before continue, I better to introduce myself properly. My name is Jose and I live in Barcelona (Spain). I always wanted to improve my English, but I have never done it gone so far. Now, I'm planning to work outside my country and English is critical in order to other people to understand me and I could for me being able to understand what they are telling me. In the last few weeks, I have been making great progress, but I still have a long way to go. I try to see watch all the movies in English with no subtitles, but sometimes I don't catch a word, it is better with some TV series, but understanding some people talking is still something really that is hard for me to do for me. Another issue is my lack of conversations in English. Any None of my close friends knows a work word in English,- so I don't have anyone to talk with and practice. Now that I know there's people over on the Internet to practice using Skype, I will do it on my free time.

I think, it that is enough for now, I hope the text is not that as bad as I think it is.

For your first entry this is incredibly good. Not bad at all! So don't panic! Things with a line through them are incorrect. Things I have highlighted in yellow are correct, and things in red are punctuation marks that you don't need. I will try and explain my corrections below

-In English we usually refer to the Internet.

-In English we search for things. However, it's far more common to hear people say that they are looking for things.

-You use a colon ":" or a hyphen "-" when the following clause of a sentence is going to give more information about the one that precedes it.

-For people to understand you. It's the same with the expression "explain this to me"

-In English we watch TV and movies etc.

-Something that is hard for me to do is a good way of phrasing what you've tried to write. I've seen other Spanish people make this mistake

-My final comment is that you've not used any contractions. This is perfectly correct, but because all of us here are lazy, we use them all the time! I think that because you've used none you're text sounds a little formal (just my opinion), but if you want it like this then it's up to you. Just something to read about. 

Your English is really good! Keep up the good work! :)