Englisch Text Production

Tach,
Hier mal eine Frucht meiner Schularbeit in Australien: Meine 'SACE Stage 1: Text Production' Arbeit. Viel Spass!

Before I came to Australia I thought about English as the language one can speak to most of the people in the world, and they'll understand, because they also learned it at school as their foreign language. I met about 50 people last year who were from all over the world, some Polish, Swedish, even Italian and Brazilian people, and they all could use English - the language they spoke to people with other mother tongues - to communicate with me, as I did, too. I thought of English as a very handy thing, a good thing to actually speak with people I wouldn't be able to talk to because they are simply born in another country. English was just a secondary, external, 'synthetic' language for me.
In addition to that, the English language is now in fact entering the German one and it is often used in advertisings, in the 'Internet language', just because the English words for some things are describing more exactly and in a shorter way what it means than the German words which are actually equal to them. So as a German, you're at least able to understand the idea of a text written in English - a former foreign language. So, for example, Honda advertises with 'The power of drams'. Everyone understands what it means!
And if one has to research something a bit exotically in the internet, you can be sure you will find it mostly in English.
In fact, we're also using many English words for technological things which were invented in the last year, so we literally just kept the foreign words and didn't even think of creating a German word for it, so for example a handy is a mobile phone, and computer is a regular German word without any equals in its 'host' language.
When I first knew I would go to Australia, I just thought about speaking English there as I did before: hear something, translate it into German, think - in German - of what I might answer, and then translate this German Text in my head to English. This may have the effect that the people I spoke to heard me speaking a very formal and slow English. I didn't mind that English could be a language just like German is for me - to use in daily conversations.
So when I came to Australia, I discovered the first time that English isn't only the language most non-English people are speaking to someone with a different mother tongue, but that it's in fact the language of the Australians (and of course the British, Americans and Canadians), the language they think in, the language they even dream in, the language they apologise to each other in.
So let me tell you a little story to show you what I mean. When I was at a party, I spoke to someone from outside Pembroke School, which means that he did not know that I was from Germany. He almost did not know anyone at all. So, when I talked to him, he thought that I was born somewhere in the 'Native English' world. This doesn't only simply make me proud; it also shows me that there are so different accents in English that you can't separate a good English speaker from a native speaker. English is so rich of native variations! In the German language, one can also separate some 10 accents or so, but you clearly can identify someone who is not a native speaker.
Now English is seizing me. This may sounds funny, but it is in fact the truth. When I'm speaking German, I really have some problems with everyday words - such as right or cheers or some swearing. Yes, I swear instinctively in English! I really have problems to speak German freely, my own mother tongue.
I never imagined that one could forget how to speak a language properly in such a short period of time. So when I'm talking to someone and I don't understand, the 'Pardon?' is just a reflex and has become a part of myself. And the next time I speak English, I can proudly tell of my two-months-long stay in Australia.