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Introduction
The English language is in my opinion a wonderful and expressive language. It is marvellous the way you can play on words and the way the tone of your voice can express for example sarcasm, humour etc, it is more pronounced in English comparing to Swedish, well in my opinion anyway.

In this essay I will attempt to assess my skills in listening, reading, speaking and writing the English language. I will try to put forward where my strengths and weaknessess lie in these.

 Acquired English (linguistic) knowledge
After my first compulsory nine years at school I went on to study Liberal Arts for three years where I studied English (of course). After completing my schooling I decided to travel and went around Europe meeting people from all over the world and we always communicated in English. I went to work on a kibbutz in Israel and there were people from USA, Canada, Australia and from all over the world as well. I spent seven months there and got to practice my English daily. I also lived in Australia for seventeen years and that is where I really improved on my English. Obviously I became used to hearing the English language it was now a part of my every day life as with speaking, reading and writing English. To communicate in English has been a part of my life for many years now, but since it is not my native language I know I still make a lot of mistakes which will improve (I hope) after completing this course. You can never learn enough!
 
§1, Listening
I do not have any problems with understanding English. I like listening to English programs on television. I can understand and identify different accents without any difficulty. However I tend to lose my concentration if I find the orator boring or if the subject is not really to my liking. This usually makes me daydream and then I just do not have a clue as to what the person is talking about. So I guess the keyword here is concentration.

§2, Reading 
I really do enjoy reading books, magazines and newspapers. It is very enjoyable and it also keeps the language alive, it is good fun to sit down and read a novel where much is left up to the imagination. It is very hard to understand why it is so much more difficult to read books on for example different governments where you have to learn all these different facts. It is not that I do not find it interesting because I do, I think the problem is that I get myself all worked up and I worry about my studying and learning abilities. I am sure this is something a lot of students experience especially when you have just started a new course. Being the eternal optimist that I am I feel quite confident things will improve given time.

§3, Speaking
I feel very comfortable with speaking English, I would probably say that this is what I am best at. There is always room for improvement however and I hope that my speaking ability will improve considerably by the end of this course. What I hope to achieve is that I can speak in a more educated manner and thus feel more confident in conversing with people from all different social backgrounds. That way I can feel more relaxed and my self-esteem will be higher.

§4, Writing
This is something I really have to work at. It has been such a long time since I last studied and therefore I will need a lot of help with how to compose my essays in the best possible way. I am not sure of what is grammatically correct or incorrect I write (and say) the way it feels it should be. Fortunately grammar is part of the course curriculum so I will get a lot of practise, and practise makes perfect!

Summary
Even though I have lived abroad for a number of years it does not give me a ticket to easy street in regards to passing this course. I am not quite sure as to how well I have mastered the four skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) I have talked about in my essay. I find it very hard to evaluate myself not knowing if I am being too hard or maybe not hard enough on myself. However I hope to pass this course and hopefully continue with the A, B, C and D courses as well, only time will tell.
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