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It's been there from the beginning, as a natural part of my life as long as I can remember. I've sung loudly to the tones of American hits and spoken make-believe English as a child an innumerable number of times. Thus, I've taken the English language to my heart and got used to the fact that it's sneaking into our own language more and more every year. I chose this course because I think English is beautiful and most of all: interesting. I've always been most fascinated by writing in this impressive language. Actually, I've always been most fascinated by writing in any language since I have plans to become a professional writer some day. Having English writing skills identical with the Swedish ones would be a dream come true. Unfortunately that is not the case. I haven't reached that far yet, although I keep trying. My vocabulary isn't quite as wide as I would like it to be, but as long as you've got a great dictionary you can spend as many hours of your leisure time looking up tricky words as you like. My Achilles' heel is the words that contain one or several o: s, like more, those, looser etc. It's a bit tricky to know whether you should skip an extra o or not. I also wish to get more acquainted with all kinds of common phrases. Phrases that naturally come floating out of your mouth in Swedish, although you haven't got a single clue what the correspondence is in English. My favourite one for the moment is to call a pick-me-up a "hair from the dog that bit you." That is such a vivid expression.
	 I think it's those everyday expressions that determine how experienced you are. Personally I don't throw many of them about when I speak English. But I do love speaking it. When I was in Greece a couple of years ago I met some British blokes who I spent a lot of time with. After that vacation we used to speak over the phone at least four times a week. My English had never been so great. I believe an hour phone call taught me more than two years of high school studies. If you get to practice your English continuously you get more confident and relaxed when it comes to opening your mouth to discuss something. In upper secondary school we often got to make speeches in front of the class. I really enjoyed that, because you learned so much. It's terrifying to see how quickly you forget all about pronunciation and speaking rhythm when you don't maintain your English.
	Speeches also make you a better listener. I believe my listening skills are quite adequate. Watching an American movie without a Swedish translation is no problem. I understand everything they say and it's not that different from watching a Swedish movie. A few days ago I sat watching Armageddon at my parents' place. After about half an hour my father crossed the room and immediately exclaimed:
- Helene, how come there's no translation?
I hadn't even discovered that, which made me feel really proud.
	The trickiest thing when it comes to understanding spoken English would be to listen to a politician or some sort of scientist. Dramatized conversations about broken marriages, troublesome teenagers and garden parties are one thing; election forecasts and lab rats something totally different.
	Reading is of course a very instructive part of English learning. In this course we're suppose to read one novel each week. I think that's great. As you read you get to pick up both new expressions and spelling of tricky words. I very much enjoy reading. I might be a slower reader in English than in Swedish, but on the other hand: how many English books have I read compared to the number of Swedish ones? 
	There was a time when I thought that English reading was extremely tedious. Then I read a book called "Go ask Alice" and it totally change my opinion. That book was so fantastic that I was dying to read more to see if there was anything else I had missed during my lifetime. I owe a lot to that novel, that's one thing I know for sure.
	I think it's quite obvious that I'm very fascinated by the English language. I admit that grammar isn't really my cup of tea, but in the long run I love it all. I have promised myself to do my very best this semester. English is a huge international language and to ignore that would be to do yourself a disservice.
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