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My favourite subject in school has always been English and I think that you can learn a lot of English during school, especially if you're interested in it. Partly because of my interest in English I went to London to work as an au-pair for half a year after I had graduated from high-school. This was in many ways a very useful experience. I have as I said, always enjoyed the English language but there are always things that you can improve and I think I learned a lot from my stay in London. Still, there are things I feel better at and things I'm worse at. When it comes to reading, writing, listening and speaking English I sure have weaknesses in all of these skills, but also strengths.
Because of my stay in London I'm quite used to listening to English. After all, it is kind of hard avoiding it when you are living in an English speaking country. You talk to people, watch television, in fact you're surrounded by the language all the time. After a while you even begin to dream in English! I feel that there is no problem when it comes to listening to and understanding English. Not only have I practised it in London as well as in school, but the English language is everywhere also in Sweden. We watch a lot of English television programs, listen a lot to English music and so forth. Though I have to admit that I can find it really hard to understand people who talk Scottish or Irish. Especially if their accent is very distinct and if they are talking fast.

Last year I studied Psychology here in Uppsala. All the literature was in English and it was hard in the beginning but after a while I got in to it and now it feels natural. The good thing about reading is that if you don't know what a specific word means, the context can help you understand it or otherwise you can always look it up in a dictionary. Things are always easier and more enjoyable if you're interseted in it and I have always enjoyed reading. When I was younger I lived in a very small village far away from my friends so you can say that books were my best-friends. It may sound horrible but I didn't suffer from it. I find it no problem reading English novels but nonfiction which sometimes consists of very technical language can be difficult to understand. If there are a lot of hard words it takes a long time to read the text and it's easy to become frustrated. 

Assessing my own abilities when it comes to speaking English I find rather difficult. You're usually not aware of the mistakes you're making when speaking. When I went to England I thought I was rather good at English, but I soon realised that I had so much to learn. A lot of people said I was very good at speaking English, as they say to most Swedish people but children are honest and the children I was taking care of pointed out all the mistakes I made when talking and there were a few... My problems consisted mainly of pronunciation mistakes I hadn't thought of before like the difference between how you say niece and knees. I think I have required a fairly good British accent now, but I know that there are many things still to learn. Things I have noticed now during our pronunciation classes for example. The thing about speaking English though, is that it is such tremendous fun! I prefer British English and love the sound of it. It's a beautiful language and there are so many good expressions in English that you can't find in Swedish. 

Writing is the one part of the English language I feel least experienced in. I have a pen-friend in Canada since eight years back so I'm used to expressing myself in English but I'm not at all used to writing essays and reports. Of course we did some writing during English classes in school, but not a lot. I have however always written a lot in Swedish so at least I'm not all that unfamiliar with the concept of writing. However I feel that these writing classes will be a good complement to my English knowledge and I'm looking forward to it. In fact I think the whole term will be useful learning, otherwise I wouldn't be here!
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