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1. Introduction
This essay is going to give you some idea about my strengths and weaknesses in the english language. I will present them in the following order. The essay begins with a short background of my earlier experiences in the english language. Then I'm going to adress the skills; starting with writing, then speaking, after that listening and ending with the skill of reading. I hope you will enjoy my little tour of the english part of my brain.
2. Background
I've began to study english in the fourth grade, a long time ago back in 1984, and I studied it for nine years. The last year I got some english teaching was back in 1994, which was my last year in high school. Since then I haven't studied english at all but I have read a lot of english books and seen a lot of movies and tv-series. Let's move on to the more important subjects like writing.

3. Writing
I'm afraid this is the skill where I have the most weaknesses and very little strenghts. The reason for that is quite simple, I haven't written any english since I left high school and that is almost five years ago. You tend to lose a lot of what you have learned during nine years, when you don't practise it so often. It's difficult to find the right words in my head and to get them down on paper(or on to the screen). And it doesn't get any easier when you have forgot almost everything you learned about gramar and foremost what you learned about the structure of sentences. A lack of practise in writing english is the main reason why my writing skills have deteriorated during the last five years. My strength is that I have written a lot of essays in swedish during the last two years, when I have studied at the univerity. I've written about seven essays, so I have got a lot of practise in structuring and linking. 4. Speaking
I have got the same problem with speaking as I have with writing, I haven't got any practise for a long time. I haven't been abroad that often during the last six years due to financial reasons. It's expensive to live on your own and there isn't any parents that will pay for your holiday-trips. Wouldn't that be nice? I haven't met so many english speaking people during these years so my spoken english isn't that good but I hope I can improve it now during this term. My biggest weakness is that I'm a little shy because I don't want to mispronounce a word, so my brain tend to have a blackout and I can't think of any thing to say. When I try I sometimes can't find the right word in my head. I think I need to start speaking english on a more regular basis. My strenghts aren't that many but I know that I have a good vocabulary and I know I'm a good speaker deep down. It just have to be dragged out of there.

5. Listening
This is a skill which I think I master very well because you get so exposed to the english language through television, movies and videogames and so on. You really can't escape from the english language when it comes to the entertainment buisness. I try not to read the subtitles when I watch a english speaking movie mainly because you miss a lot of the jokes and the cool oneliners because the translators can't translate everything. My weakness is that I don't know all of the words, but who does? 

6. Reading
This is one skill where I've got a lot of practise during the last years. The main reason for that is my university studies. Many of the books for the courses are in english, so you have to read them. In my literature course we read a lot of the fiction books in english. And in my sparetime I read fantasyliterature and many fantasybooks take a long time to be translated into swedish so I read them in english(it's cheaper too because you can buy it in paperback). My weakness is the same as in listening, I don't know all words but I don't find that to be a big problem. You can understand the plot anyway.
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