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In this essay I analyse and describe my skills in English regarding expressing myself and comrehending spoken and written English. As a background to this evaluation of my knowledge and sence of the language I would like to mention to what degree I have been exposed to it: 
From fourth grade till second grade in "Swedish high school" I took obligatory English-classes, but from these seven years of active learning I can only recall few times when I had to speak English and therefor I have not had the ability to practise expressing myself oraly in any wider sence. Additionally my English-teachers tended to put only little stress on writing, emphasising listening- and reading-comprehension instead. Furthermore I believe I have gained most of my knowledge of the language through being exposed to it through media in everyday life and I am sure the occasional holidays I have been on to England have had a positive impact on my skills. All this together concludes that I have used the English language relatively little since I finished the obligatory English-classes (it has been three years since then) and since knowledge of language is like doing sports, one got to practise to become and stay good at it, I have probably not improved since. 
Now I am attending an A-level English-course at the Uppsala University.

I will herein give further information about my skills in English, regarding (in order) reading, listening, speaking and writing.

When it comes to reading English, to begin with, I am not very experienced. I have never payed any greater attention to papers, magazines or any other literature in English until now; What I have gained in reading has basically gone through school and did not encourage me to further reading on my own. 
How good a reader am I, then? In spite of the little experience I have of literature in English I believe I can manage to understand the basic context of most fiction, but when it comes to daily papers and technical magazines, for instance, problems with unfamiliar vocabulary, of greater meaning to the context, are inevitable, and put a limit to my reading comprehension. 
Nevertheless, once I get in to a writer's way of writing and learn the "key-words" in the text, no matter what text it might be, I am very likely to get the context, and in fact I consider reading as one of my strongest skills speaking of English.

Between reading and listening there are close points of simularity regarding my weaknesses of them, but in relation to reading I have been exposed to a lot of speaking. Nevertheless, my ability of listening-comprehension naturally varies with who is speaking. For instance, the lecturers I have had this far in the English-course I am attending at the Uppsala University represent several dialects and ways of speaking. Usually, I do not find any of them very difficult to understand unless they talk very fast and use words unfamiliar to me. Though, interestingly enough, I find the native Swedes at the Department slightly easier to catch. I suppose that is because their way of expressing themselfes is closer to how Swedes generally express themselfes, or perhaps they are simply slower talkers.
 This far I have described the part of language that has with comprehesion to do - reading and listening - both of which I consider myself to be somewhat better at than at the other part of language, that has with expressing oneself to do, namely speaking and writing.

As I mentioned above, I do believe that my sence of speaking proper English has not reached very far during seven years of English-classes in school. What I can remember being taught in school on speaking English is basically how to ask the way to the groceries and such things; We seldom had oral conversations in English and now, when I have to speak English at the university, I often find it difficult to find the right words and expressions, though it feels as if I am slowly developing an ability to find alternative words and expressions at the same time as I am increasing my vocabulary. 

As I wrote, I feel far from comfortable with my spoken English, though writing is probably even harder to me; When I am reading a text in English I can usually tell whether it is written in proper English or not, but then again, when it comes to expressing myself I can not possibly find those expressions that made so obvious sence to me as I read them. Another thing that I am not so sure about is how to write different kinds of texts, formal letters as opposed to informal letters for instance, but even worse is that I often tend to make silly spelling-mistakes, which is of course another matter of practise and awareness. 
On the whole I quite like writing, though, but I have a feeling that some things I write mean something completely different from what I intended them to do. 

To conclude I will sum up my skills in English: I do not feel very experienced of writing and talking in English, whereas I consider myself to be a little more skilled when it comes to reading and listening.
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