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As long as I can remember I've always been a child and I will probably continue to be a child for the next decades or so. Being a child (although a bit bigger now) I've always been curious of everything and always had a will to know more and more, anxious and restless you might say, and it's true, I was and still is a very energetic person. Well what has this to do with the English language in listenign, reading, speaking and writing?. The following contious prose is supposed to shed some light on my specific relation to the English language. Because of my extrem curiosity as a child, I always tried to ask questions, make my point heard or just slap somebody with a quick joke this meant that I had to make my voice heard no matter what language. And the way I see it I have three main points to take up which has had influence in my English. They are:
* My parents
* My teachers
* My current job as an officer in the Royal Swedish Navy Starting with my parents. 
They have always been a sort of amatuer-nomads, travelling around the world with me and my sister. All of that travelling forced me to speak all sorts of language but mainly English. As an example: when I was 12 years-old I was sent to Hastings, England on a language course in English. I had to live in a completely foreign family and manage on my own with only three years of English in school. My fellow comrades were 4-6 years older than, I mean, looking back it's pretty young being 12 years-old alone for three weeks in a non-Swedish speaking environment. But I learned some amazing things about England both cultural and social but especially about speaking to natives and listenign to natives. All this travelling has made me very confident in speaking and listening to the English language, as it is today I have no problem at all to communicate even fluently after a couple of minutes (even more fluently after a couple of beers). My teachers during my time has all to the extent of one been very good and supporting. Some of the encourageing writing, other forced it on their pupils, but almost always with good results in the end. I've always loved writing and has always been easy in writing. But somehow I didn't pay enough attention in the grammar classes. And now, looking back, that's one of my weaknesses, grammar. But I have told myself that I'm going to put down as efford as I can to grammar. Surprisingly I find grammar much more amuszing now than I did when I was younger, it's probably a question of maturity. My job has put me on the world scene once more in my life. Now together with my travelling in the past, I've been to every continent in the world accept the North and South poles. I've had lots opportunities to test my English. I remember one special event that put my English ability on the test. We were to board (a strike team consisting of 10 men, fast-ropes down from a helicopter and seizes the ship that is being supposed to be boarded in order to take control of the vessel and make it safe for a search- party to come onboard. They search the vessel looking for illegal aliens, drugs, weapons etc) a Polish landing-carrier of the Polnucha class (they carry marine infantry and amfibious assault tanks up to a company size) during a Partnership For Peace (PFP) exercise in the Baltic sea. When we came onboard everything was a total caos. Soon enough we had seized controll of the ship and started to interrogate the crew. It was my assignment. Soon I found myself in a tricky situation: the crew didn't speak a word of English and no other language, except Russian, for that matter. Since my Russian language abilities is a bit rusty (read: does not exist) I had a problem. After a while I managed to get hold of a man who could speak a little bit of English and a long and energetic interrogation of the crew could begin. When we had gotten what we wanted out of the crew my head was about to explode of exhaustion. My aceing need for some "real" American English was soon to be satisified, soon we were picked up by the US Coast Guard vessel USCG Tahoma on which we stayed for 24 hours as guests. Summing up this essay is easy: I love English and hope that my teachers and this course will help me reach a higher level of knowledge conserning listening, reading, speaking and writing.
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