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<title> EVALUATION English, My English! </title>
	When I and my 12 other classmates in the third grade was about to embark on the wonderful adventure of learning a new language, that is to say English, I'd really been looking forward to it! Since then, I've studied English for 10 years and my English has improved. And I've stayed fascinated with the language, mostly because the fact that the English language has been adopted as the "official" European language. People in the world of today look upon themselves as cosmopolitans rather then just Swedes. And it's of course necessary in this case to master a language which can be used in several countries. Maybe that's the fascination about it that you can cope in many European countries depending on how good you are at speaking, comprehending etc. 
When it comes to evaluate my own skill of the English language, I have to consider the different parts of language learning such as listening, reading, speaking and writing. When I have evaluated them as separate skills I can get an overall view, and figure out what can be done to improve my knowledge of English even more - because it can of course be improved. 
If we start with the listening part, naturally I'm exposed to TV and music in my everyday life. They are probably the only sources of English that I listen to continuously. When it comes to TV there's often a shortcut that you can take, that is to read the translated underlined text. But when I get myself not to do that, I find that I can understand most of what they're saying. Well okay, maybe there's a word here and there, and probably even sentences that I don't understand but when you put them in their context you get a grasp of what they mean. And of course, you can always look at the underlined text to see how they've translated it, and hopefully remember it until next time. Unfortunately, most jokes aren't really funny when you translate them, so you had better understand the English text. 
Music producers on the other hand don't seem to take the grammatical rules seriously - all they want is a good rhyme. When you listen to the text you stop and you frown and wonder what they sang. But at least you've noticed it, and that says something about your grammar skills, doesn't it?
My writing ability, is mostly based on the English grammar. I believe that grammar teaching at school wasn't enough, but who would have thought of complaining at that time? Now when I'm taking English courses at the University for my own interesst, I notice that the knowledge of grammar could have improved my English. Another aspect is that I really haven't written so much on my own except when told by teachers. But there were writing excercises at high school. And we also had quite enough of essays and other things and due to that I think my writing is rather good, but more work at structuring the essays, and of course filling up my vocabulary will help me.
Speaking of vocabulary, it is the most valuable thing when you try to make yourself understood in English. It's devastating when you try to explain e.g. a Swedish concept in English and you can't think of the equivalent phrase in English. I find myself limited by my English vocabulary, and that's probably one reason that I sometimes feel inhibited to try to explain at all. Misunderstandings are inevitable because I don't know every English word. That's why I have to put more effort in learning more words in order to create sentences and also to increase the fluency in my speaking. In high school we didn't really have a lot of oral excercises despite a conversation course - which was very good, and we got to do a lot of presentations in English and so on. To improve my fluency it's necessary to go abroad and then have to speak English. Since I have never been to an English speaking country my fluency and my pronunciation can improve a lot! Definitely something to do in the future!
Vocabulary knowledge is also very important when you evaluate your reading ability. But as said before that words put in a context are easier to understand than the words completely on their own. I read many books in English so I will in time feel rather competent in that area. Of course, I have to look up a word or two in the dictionary. 
So what is the overall conclusion? Well, I feel my English is pretty good but it can be a lot better. And that's one of the reasons for taking English courses at the University. Another reason for studying English is the fascination of the language which I've had since the third grade. And hopefully the journey of improvement through the English language continues.
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