Do you judge international students' English skills? (be honest)

You written English is good. A lot of people don't bother with vernacular lexicon and just speak formal English, which is fine, but it is important to learn the meaning all the different words and some irregular sentences structures you'll encounter with various British dialects.

Practice makes perfect, I'd suggest joining a society and making some more British friends so you can expand on your conversational skills. It will help ease you fears about your spoken English, which I have no doubt is actually pretty good in person, and hopefully ease your social anxiety. It is a big step, but I knew a lot of initially nervous international students who really blossomed into social creatures, the life of the party if you will, through societies.

In general British people are quite patient, but we don't often correct people's mistakes unlike the Germans. Sometimes this is less helpful to the person wanting to learn English, our politeness can be a bit of a bother at times. Personally so long as I can understand what a person is saying I don't have a problem or judge them.

Thank you for your kind words. The thing is I used to have social anxiety even before I moved to England, but my confidence goes even lower when I speak a foreign language.

I know you just said you guys are reluctant to correct people's mistakes, but could you honestly say my written English is indistinguishable from that of a native speaker? In other words would you be able to tell I am a non-native speaker from the way I write? I'm asking because I had a guy I met on Tinder tell me that he could guess I was a non-native speaker even though I did not make grammatical mistakes.

No problem. Social anxiety sucks, and I hope it gets better for you. Try not worry about what others think, I know it is difficult but its how you feel about yourself that matters most.

Your English is a bit rigid, but in I wouldn't presume you were a non-native speaker from the way you write. I'd just think you were educated, considering the many grammatical mistakes that native speakers make Maybe he thought that because of you name and picture on Tinder?

By rigid, do you mean I should spice up my writing and include different sentence structures?

Maybe my name and pictures influenced his perception a bit, but he insisted that the main thing that gave me away was my "too proper" English.

You can do, but in fairness I see nothing wrong with how you write now. Maybe the few odd slang terms or abbreviations could be included.

''Too proper'' English To be honest though it does seem that some foreigners make a better attempt at the language than some natives.

I'm aware that slang is my weakness. I'm just trying to be careful with it as it's too easy to mess up with something you can't directly learn from a formal resource (e.g. dictionary). But thanks for your feedback!

In relation to the last sentence, this is my (controversial) opinion: someone who speaks a foreign language fluently enough to study in it is likely to be smarter than the average population, hence their better grammar. Also we generally learn English in a classroom setting focusing (admittedly too much) on grammar.

I guess you're falling into the trap of taking the easy way out of the problem all foreign students have when they go to a foreign country ie sticking to the circle of friends, probably foreign students, in the same situation as you.

This is a big mistake. It is much more pleasant to use them as a ready made social circle but you will not get the benefit from your stay here if you continue in this way.

Make every effort to cut all ties with these people. No talking Chinese, German whatever your language is - at all. And if you continue to see them you will inevitably fall back into your bad old ways.

The reason why you are here is not just to study but to learn about British culture and way of life. You do that by mixing with British people, experiencing 'culture shock'. Join clubs, do sports, in and out of University.

Future employers will value your stay here if you have learned self reliance and it has strengthened your character. Conversely if all you can say is that you spent your time with your own nationals they will not be impressed.

In your favour you have realised that there is a problem. I lived abroad too. I made a conscious decision to keep away from any English speakers unlike friends who just took a flat together. Consequently my fluency improved hugely theirs hardly at all. I'm not pretending it won't be hard and you'll feel lonely and isolated but this will make you put in the effort to make British friends. You don't say how long you are here for. If just for a year you are running out of time. Hopefully it is for longer.

I think you got the wrong idea from my post; I am not hanging out with people from my home country. They are all from different countries and it just happens that English is a second language to most of them. When we hang out together everyone speaks English as that is our only common language.

Well yes, the problem is the same. You're not mixing with the British which is the point of being here. You learn English by being with native speakers: you learn about the British way of life by living and being with the British...