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I'm german and my first english lesson was at age 12. I wasn't very good and I finished school with a bad grade in english. I begun to study computer science in media and with this subject you can't get around english. I watched a lot of english and british tv-shows, first with german, then english and know mostly without subtitles. It helped a lot to understand the language better. A few years back I started to reread my Harry Potter books in german, but at the end I switched to the english version. Now I can't imagine to read those books in german. Mainly because I don't like the sound of the german translation like "Zauberspruch" oder "Todesser". But I also that you lost the british-feeling with the translation. That is what I thought after I read the sherlock holmes novels in english. Another point is swearing. I think german swearing sounds funny, specially if you translate it from english. I had a reading example from The Casual Vacancy in german and the swearing was rather poorly translated. This is why I read rather the english original. I think humor, swearing or the feeling of the culture is very difficult to translate. But there are a few things you don't get if you don't live in this culture, but if that is happening I google to look it up.
through books and tv-shows I improved to understand english, but I don't like to speak or write it, because my grammar and spelling isn't very good. I'm on my way to improve this too, but sometimes I'm just to lazy to sit there and study ;p
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