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Studying English is useful in many ways. That is why I decided to take this course. I have not studied English since the second year in upper secondary school and I have not been studying English abroad yet, so my English is not very good at the moment. I went to London for a weekend one year ago to visit my friends, but since I lived and spent most of my time with my Swedish friends I did not speak that much English. Last semester I was travelling in South East Asia with two of my friends. That really improved my English, especially reading and listening.
Listening to English is what I like best with the English language, because that is what I think is easiest. The reason I find it easy is because during my journey in South East Asia people spoke English almost everywhere. Because of this I got used to the language and different accents. I have always found the English language beautiful. 
Before my journey I always read the subtitles when I was watching an English movie and disliked watching a movie without it, because it was difficult to understand the movie. Now it does not really matter if the movie has subtitles or not as long as the language is not too complicated. 

When I was younger I disliked reading English books and articles because I concentrated too much on the words I did not understand, instead of trying to make out what the author could possibly mean by reading the whole sentence. Recently I decided to try to get the context and I learned that the more I read the easier it got. Now I really enjoy reading English texts, mainly because when a text is translated it often loses a lot of the good parts like jokes and expressions but I also like knowing that I can read an English text without any major problems.

I have never liked talking in front of a group no matter what language it is. That is a quite common problem, I think. Having a conversation (in English), in a lecture for example, with one or two people is usually not a problem. As a matter of fact I think it is fun speaking English but in a relaxed way though. Sometimes it is difficult for me to find the right word, but on the other hand this happens in Swedish as well sometimes. When I went on this trip I thought that my spoken English would improve but it got worse instead. Since most of the population spoke English a lot worse than we did we had to simplify our English, which meant that we had to express ourselves their way, like - No have, no like, no same. I am used to use the language but in a simple, or rather strange, way. We met a lot of Swedish people who we became good friends with and of course we talked Swedish with each other. On the entire trip we did not speak that much proper English. It is a shame we did not use the opportunity to speak English when we had it. 
Writing has always been my weakness both in English and Swedish. That is because we did not write much at school and when we did we did not get much help. I find structuring, paragraphing and linking difficult. Sometimes my imagination just disappears and I do not know what to write at all. I have not been writing in English for two and a half years and I have noticed that I have forgotten a lot about grammar and writing. Spelling on the other hand is not something I have a problem with. I really would like to improve my writing. The only way to do that, I guess, is to practise.

I have been very self-critical but I think it is important to search myself and realize what problems and difficulties I have. This knowledge will make it easier to improve.
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