<doc.id=0165.a1>
English is the first foreign language Swedish pupils meet in school. When I went to school we started studying English in the 4th form, but now English can be taught - in small doses - already in the 1st form, when you are 6 or 7 years old. 
Here's the story about my English, from the beginning up till now, which is not the end but another beginning. 

The first time I heard English and was aware of it being English was when I was about 7 years old and we had English guests in our house. I didn't understand anything of what was being said. It was just words flying around above my head and therefore I was quite surprised a few years later, when I had studied English for some time and heard English on TV and realised that I actually understood what was being said and I also remember I thought that it was strange that I hadn't understood that language before, because now the translation and understanding were no big problems for me. Nowadays it can happen that I suddenly get a sense of déjà vu when I hear something, but I can not always say that I know which language I first heard it in, a "problem" which I think is good to have. It proves that you partly know the foreign language as good as your mother tongue.

Another part of a language is the reading. I remember the textbooks we had in the 5th form... We learned words like "tusk" and "tadpole" which I've never used ever since. Unfortunately we didn't read any novels or even short stories till during the last year in high school and I think that if we'd begun earlier with the reading part all our other skills would have been better. I myself like to read and of pure interest I read some of Roald Dahl's books and short stories the year after graduating. Not that I feel that I wouldn't be so good in English as I am now if I hadn't read those books - the improvement is only marginal - but I think you get a better view of the language system when you read and that you in an unconscious way make some sort of template in your head of the language and then use this template when speaking for example.

The spoken language is the main part of a language. It is the hub around which all other parts turn. (The hub tells the speed of the whole wheel.) Even if you know everything about the difference between an adverb and an adverbial or how to conjugate a verb, if you don't know how to say the adverb or adverbial or to say a verb's conjugated forms, then you don't have much use of your knowledge unless you're aiming at a career as an author of that language in question.
Since we as a family have been travelling in England among other countries, I've heard spoken British English, but I've never spent enough time in the UK or some other English speaking country to get some fluency in the language or to make the Swedish accent disappear totally - I'm still working on it - but then, when you have the right pronunciation you just have to pick up the intonation and, suddenly, you sound like a native speaker of English.

So, if you should one day succeed in sounding like a native speaker of English you will have to write like one too. That is the tricky part of the English language - to spell. You hear a word for the first time, you know its meaning, but, it's not evident that you know how to spell the word. For example the words "meat" and "meet". If you hear one of the words (for the first time) you can't know which spelling is the right one. I remember once I asked my father if he could help me translate a Swedish word into English and he said the word in English. Then I gave my proposal to the spelling of the word, but I wasn't even close to the right answer. That's what difficult in English, even if you know the language quite well you can't be sure of the spelling of an unseen or unheard word and here we come back to the importance of reading, because when reading you see the words in their "right environment" and after having seen a word many times you add to your template the word with its spelling, its meaning and function.

This was the story about "my English" and next time I write an essay, hopefully it will show that I have read my novels and short stories by the fewer wrongly spelt words I write.
</doc>