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<title> English, My English! </title>
In this text I will try to evaluate my present skills in the English language concerning the aspects of listening, speaking, reading and writing. But I will speak both in general and personal terms about what I think has affected my learning, and what I think of my English skills. 
I start with my strength, which is listening. With this I don't mean that I understand every word but the general meaning of things. How did I acquire this? you may wonder. Well, I think it has a lot to do with the television programmes. Here in Sweden you are able to watch mostly American TV series every night (not saying that I do...). Most of the films on the cinemas are also American, and are not dubbed. I have also picked up some when I have been travelling. My personality is also such as I listen more than I speak. Anyway, my ears seams to get bigger whenever I hear there are English spoken nearby. There are of course times when I don't understand, I'm thinking of when people speak in dialects and slang. One example where slang was used was in the movie "Die Hard 4" where I had a really hard time understanding there dialogues. 
Speaking has of course a lot to do with listening in one aspect. You have to both speak and listen to get the right communication. I think speaking skills are best practised when only two persons are communicating. In that way you don't have to worry so much even if you say the wrong grammatical form or don't have the exact right pronunciation. To speak correctly is of course important but should come later on when a person has crossed the line of not being afraid of expressing their thoughts and ideas. I have learnt most of my speaking skills when travelling for shorter or longer periods. The most important one was three months in 1998 when I went to Hawaii to work as a volunteer. I guess I am influenced by the British English in school and the American English everywhere else. On the other hand its very hard to evaluate your own speaking-skills, because you can only rely on the aspect of being understood. But between that and speaking with perfection it can be a very long way. To that comes also the difficulty to change a taken pronunciation, especially if nobody tells you when you are wrong. 
The third element was reading. I like to read when I have a good book. I also like English language, so from time to time I've read an English novel for a change. However, I can assure you that it takes more time than a Swedish one, but the more I read the faster I get. Sometimes I get really tired if there are many words that I don't comprehend but I've learnt not to let them interfere with the general understanding of the text. In the beginning I tried to look them up, but found that this interrupted my reading too much. I think that I should work with getting a bigger vocabulary, as in the first grades in school when we got words to learn for every week. 
My writing skills are also founded in school. Sometimes a little intimidated by all the red marks shown on the paper when I got it back from the teacher. In upper secondary school it's more difficult to see this as a help to getting better, so that you can work on your weaknesses. You only think it shows how bad and unimprovable you are. Today most of my English writing concerns e-mails to my friends in other countries, who don't have English as their mother tongue. I like to write if I know what to write. It gives me a feeling of having accomplished something when the printed text lies in front of me. Anyhow, I think I have a lot to improve grammatically but I'm guessing that maybe my way of putting sentences together is alright. 
By using a language continuously you will eventually get better at it, if someone is there to point out the things that are wrong. If you have fun along the way doing that it will certainly give you an advantage and speed the process in learning!
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