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Competence in English, I think, depends on many things. It is a personel matter of how we learn a language. We might have very easy just to listen to a languge and imitate or we had to struggle and practise all the time. For me, at the moment, English is a struggle because it is twenty years since I left school and I have forgot parts of the subject. I had a refreshment when I went studying the B-cours in KOMVUX, but it was four years ago. I will try to evaluate my present knowledge in the English language and begin with the skill I find most interest in and that is reading. 
	My teacher in English always said to us that we should read English books to keep up our English. So I have tried to do so, but it is difficult to have time when you are studying. But some of the study literatur is in English so I have had a little practise there. I usually read fiction in the summer when I am free from studying. It is niece to have a book when I am lying on the beach to get a suntan.
	My reading pace is not so high, I believe, because when I see a word I don't understand, I look it up in a dictionary. Not all of course, but when it matters for the context I think it is importent to do so. Sometimes I write it down so I can go back to the word if it shows up again in the text. The more we read the better we read and it will also develop other skills like speaking and writing.
	Speaking is something that I am not so good at. I have not got so much practise in school and I have not been abroad so much. That is what I fear most in this course. Everybody seems so experienced about it. I feel that I can't find the right words and they fall out of my head. But I think I will be more fluent when I get the opportunity to practise in this course. I think there will be many chances and different situations in class and when we go to England for five weeks. It will be good to hear native speakers and to be obliged to speak English all the time.
	When I went to school and we listen to English, it was always in a very correct way. And it was always British English with no dialect. We were not supposed to speak American English in class. But today there is a mixture of all sorts of English. We see and hear diffrent sorts of English on TV and when we listen to music. I try to listen to English on TV without looking at the text. It can be difficult to understand sometimes when they talk with a dialect or Australian English. It takes time to get used to hear and understand dialects but that is the way most people talk. 
	Writing is also a skill that I must improve. It takes so much time and I have difficult to express myself in English. But I think it can be difficult in Swedish too, to be quite honest about it. I have experienced the writing process before so I am familier with that. The more you practise the better. I don't remeber that we wrote esseys when I went to uppersecondary school, only in KOMVUX. There we wrote very short about some novels we read.
	When I write I have thougts about spelling, phrases and how you can translate them from Swedish into English. It can be difficult to find the right meaning in phrases when you translate Swedish into English. The grammar is also important when you write. I try to revise my knowledge in grammar so I will become a better writer and a better speaker too.
	I have noticed that English words begin to pop up in my head more and more often. My vocabulary is expanding when I have to read, write and speak in English. Perhaps I will soon think and dream in English too.
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