<doc.id=1086.a1>
<title> English, My English! </title>
I'm going to try to describe my ability in English, in the skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing. I'll start with my ability to listen to English, and stop with my knowledge of wrighting English.
I remember that we, when I was eleven recorded a film from televison, To have and to have not, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I loved that movie and saw it again and again. After I'd seen it about thirty times I discovered something great; I could understand more of what was said than from merely reading the swedish translation! The fact that it was always so much more that was said in a foregein film than that you could understand by reading the Swedish lines, had always irritaded me. But when I listened carefully to the english lines in this film, I could understand them, not all of them, but some of them. It was a great discovery. 
 I've been to London three times now, and a few times I had difficulties in understanding people, particullary people who spoke fast accents. I was in an Indian resturant in this summer, on my first visit to London all alone. I remember thinking to myself after a very strange conversation whith the waiter, in which we both acted as we had hearing problems; why don't you talk propely? I wish everyone in England could talk like my english teacher in ninth grade. It would make the world better. It's a bit easier when you watch an English film. Of course I understand a bit more English now than I did when I watched To have and to have not, but I still need to see some filmscenes over and over again, before I fully understand them. Especially since I've a preference for irish films.
 I prefer to read in Swedish, whith a few exceptions. When I read in English it's often books by authors who writes rather simply, like Roddy Doyle or Helen Fielding. Sometimes you are of course forced to read a book in english because it's simply hasen't been translated but in general I read in Swedish. Whith one exception, and that is english poetry and Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare with all his puns and poetry can't be the same in Swedish and should be read in English. I remembered that when I first discovered Shakespeare, above all Romeo and Juliet, I was furious because I couldn't understand the english text propely. I wished then, for the first time, that I'd been born in an english speaking country, preferbly Irland. But then I started to read the play in swedish, to understand the words, (I was to lazy to look it up, and I still dosen't like to do that) and then I read it in English again and again, just because of the english language, and what Shakespeare did with it. I read rather slow in English, and that is of course because I dosen't have the patience to do it more often. I've improved, however, during my studies at the university, where you sometimes have to read in english, no matter what kind of subject you're studying. 
Unfortunately, I've never been abroad long enough to get some sort of an english accent. I was tought to speak RP in school, but I didn't get much chance to listen to it. What I did get to hear, like most youth in Sweden nowadays, was American english. I would like to be able to speak perfect RP and also some sort of Irish accent, but I'm sorry to say that if I do speak some sort of English accent, its probably American english, which I don't even like, part from the southern accent. However, people seem to understand most of the things I tell them in english, even if I can't pronunce some more difficult words correctly. I'm awfully bad at writing good english. That's my biggest weakness in english. I'm terrible at the most essential part of the English language; grammar, and this makes it difficult for me to produce good english prose. I can't say anything good about my writing abilities. 
In short; I'm rather good in listening and reading, a bit worse when it comes to speaking and terrible in writing.
</doc>