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I first started studying English on my own when I was eight years old. My six years older sister had a sort of wordbook from Disney, I can't remember the title, but I can clearly remember the contents. I loved that book, it had a lot of cartoon pictures and beside them you could find the English word and the Swedish translation. If the word was tricky pronouncing, there was also a kind of phonetic translation. Back then I was really interested in languages, eager to learn. My sister taught me how to read (in Swedish) when I was only five years old.
	In fourth grade we started learning English in school. My teacher started with easy words at first (like tractor) and held up a picture while saying them to the class. Then we repeated the words together. I remember the hardest word in the textbook - Penelope. It was the name of a girl with long dark hair and glasses. I didn't like that girl because of her name... But I had really fun and loved English-class, even when we started studying grammar. I already had an advantage of the others because of the early studies in Disney's book. Of course I was one of the best pupils in this subject, and that's always nice isn't it?
	At the senior level of the nine-year school it wasn't so much fun having English as before. The reason for this could be the fact that we didn't have a "real" English teacher. In fact, she was a music teacher and her pronouncing wasn't that perfect. But I liked her and she gave me a "MVG" (the highest mark) for my essay on Nordic mythology, which I wrote in English and I also gave a talk on it in English. That was my first big assignment in this subject, and it made me proud that I had done it and that she liked my work. At this moment, we were training conversation with dialogue practising. We were divided in pairs, A and B, with the same crossword but with different words filled in. We were supposed to explain our words to the other person, so that both got a completed crossword. This was the most effective practice because everybody actually talked English during this time. At other times, we usually slipped in some Swedish words during conversation; the teacher wouldn't notice. The rest of this three years is a blur when it comes to the English-classes, maybe due to the fact that we started studying other languages. I chose French as a second language and continued with this in upper secondary school.
	I studied at the social studies program and at this time I got a very good English teacher. Unfortunately she didn't get much of respect from the male students, but we learned a lot by for example reading a novel in English for the first time, and then discussing it with the teacher. I read a novel called "Travels With My Aunt" and it wasn't that good, but it was fun talking about it afterwards. In this way we proved we indeed had read the book and understood the text. By discussing we learned how to talk freely and not from a sheet of paper. Our teacher had excellent pronunciation and that was good (for a change). The last year, we didn't have any English-classes at all, and that was a pity. It was like you were loosing the hang of it. I would have preferred if we had had English throughout the whole program instead of studying everything at once and then nothing the last year. Although we could chose an English-course the last year if we wanted to, I thought computer-knowledge was more important, so I studied that subject and got a really good grade too. 
	So here I am in the university intending to study English to become an English teacher myself. I hope that my skills will improve and that I'm not going to be fed up with English in the end. Because after all, what school needs today is good and committed English teachers. I hope I'll make it!
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