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<title> English, My English! </title>
My English has developed during the years from being an obscured stranger till what it is today. Like getting to know a foreign person this developing has gone step by step through experiences like the first time I went abroad, or the first time I found my self in a situation when I couldn't trust my mother tongue and was entirely dependent on my skills in English. The four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing I have learned in precisely that order where I'm still trying to get better on my writing and spelling.

	The English language has always been a part, if even foreign, of my life since the English language was already a great element of the Swedish media at the time when I grew up, but it was when I was about to turn ten I first got in touch with the Swedish school-English. A confrontation which at that point was very unclear and foggy, literally.
	I remember the first English lesson and how hard I tried to read what my teacher had written on the blackboard. A sentence that made no sense and made me giddy looking at.
For weeks I thought that this was how this strange language worked and I couldn't for my life understand how someone could be stupid enough to make such an unclear language.
A month later or so I got my first glasses.

	To listen and to read was probably the first I learned as a new student in English. Though I earlier wrote that English were a part of the Swedish media when I was a child, I think it's much more easier to get in contact with the English language today when almost every family have a computer with Internet at home. Today we use the English language in all sorts of media and we get in touch with the language every day. I have always been curious and attentive and therefor been a good listener of English and I have quite easy to understand when I hear someone speak English. I've always read books, both in Swedish and in English, and that has given me a wide understanding of words and their meaning.
 Opposite to that it took a long time for me to find the courage to speak in front of other people. I grew up in a large family and since we were six brothers and sisters my parents couldn't afford to take the family on holiday's abroad or send us to schools in Europe or the States. Therefore it took until I was 15 before I travelled abroad for the first time and met people which I had to use my English to communicate with.
	
	Now I have travelled abroad each summer for four years and I'm starting to accept that it is acceptable to speak even if you sometimes say one or two words wrong. It's the same thing for me with the spelling. I have in the past five years get to known a few pen-pals from all over the world and this has helped me to understand the language more.
	I have always thought the hardest part in expressing the English is the writing, since this is the thing you practise least in the Swedish elementary school.

	Summarizingly I feel the English language is very important for me. When I have travelled abroad I have realised that languages of all kind is what connects people and that the English language is that language which can make people with all sorts of backgrounds and mother tongues to build bridges and come close to each other. 
	I think the new Swedish school-system where you start learning English for fun already when you are about seven years old is a step at the right direction. My little brother who now is twelve can do his English better than me when I was about 14 or 15. That is a step in the right direction.
	Something that I will work harder with my self is to be a better and more careful English writer and to keep on travelling to get an insight in different peoples cultures and social lives.
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