Hi Avy,

All was fine and I slept well at night :), until I came on this board. I found the English I spoke was so different from the English the others were speaking. I found the sentence construction I used and the way I used words was VERY different.
I would suggest that the cross-section of people you see on this board, particularly amongst the regulars, is in no way representative of the English-speaking population at large. You're looking at a very small group here, many of whom have a passion for words, language and literature, and who have an excellent command of things like vocabulary and grammar. I often feel inadequate, but I get over it and post anyway. What I'm trying to say is that if you measured yourself by a more reasonable standard, you'd probably make a higher assessment of your English skills.

2. PS every post I make I work on the sentence construction and words so that it "fits in" better.
Me too, and still the errors (spelling, grammatical, plain old woolly thinking,...) creep in. In truth, sometimes my posts are fairly casual, more like the language I'd use speaking to or emailing a friend, and sometimes I'll put more effort into making it "correct". I imagine that I'm not alone on that point.

There are certainly a few errors and unusual constructions in your post above, and I don't know how different it would have been if you hadn't worked hard on it, but I don't think any English speaker would have any problems understanding exactly what you are saying. Which is more than can be said for some of the posts I've seen here from native English-speakers!

I think I can safely say that both (all?) of us are learning something valuable here.