Originally Posted by Galtar
"My mother tongue is not english, and in school we spend a lot of time on learning english and the grammar." -> While attending school I spent a significant amount of time studying English and it's proper grammar, however my native language is not English.
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True WRT the caps. However I disagree with most of your other changes:
1. Is there a reason to change the main verb tense? I don't think he said he was out of school.
2. It's not necessary to shift "and" to "however" -- the second independent clause is indeed not complimentary to the first; but it's idiomatic to use "and" or "but" in informal discussion. Further, if you take "My mother tongue is not english" to mean "I am a native of a country that does not speak English" then you could make a case that the relationship is complimentary. That is in fact how I took it when I read the sentence for the first time; and I was therefore confused for a while why you thought it needed to be "however."
3. The tone of your suggestion is more formal than the OP's original wording.
4. "It's" == "it is" not the possessive of "it."
5. "...has me concerned" is generally perceived as rude, FYI.
Anyway on another note: I definitely agree that foreign language study improves your conscious grasp of your own language's structure; and therefore probably helps parse "broken" versions of that language. I also had grammar beaten into me in primary/middle school, but never really understood what I was learning until I learned it in the context of a foreign language in high school.