How did you improve speaking or listening skills of English?
What kinds of apps, movies or methods etc do you recommend to improve speaking and listening skills for English?
I went to Malaysia from 4th to 7th this month and wanted to enjoy conversation more fluently. I can understand so-so if it's one on one and slowly, but I often ask again many times and cannot talk without thinking. In addition, it was very hard to catch up conversation in group talk.

English is just a tool to communicate for me. My goal is enjoying conversation with people from various countries, discussing about each studies or collecting more information effectively etc. So I often try to learn English without textbooks, instead of that, I read scientific reports or write comments on Facebook or play POKEMON games in English etc. I couldn't continue to study just English, but this way may be not effective to accelerate improving English...?

Question

How did you improve speaking or listening skills of English?
What kinds of apps, movies or methods etc do you recommend to improve speaking and listening skills for English?
I went to Malaysia from 4th to 7th this month and wanted to enjoy conversation more fluently. I can understand so-so if it's one on one and slowly, but I often ask again many times and cannot talk without thinking. In addition, it was very hard to catch up conversation in group talk.

English is just a tool to communicate for me. My goal is enjoying conversation with people from various countries, discussing about each studies or collecting more information effectively etc. So I often try to learn English without textbooks, instead of that, I read scientific reports or write comments on Facebook or play POKEMON games in English etc. I couldn't continue to study just English, but this way may be not effective to accelerate improving English...?

Answer

Hello Shunta, honestly it sounds like you're already on the right track if your goal is to learn natural English for social situations. You have already found many fun resources that help you to enjoy learning and using English. Many people forget that learning English is supposed to be fun! I think what you need is a way of organising all of this study to ensure that you are always improving rather than just listening or reading passively. You can do this by focusing more on individual articles or sections of video, making notes on new USEFUL vocabulary (don't waste time learning words you'll never use) and looking for opportunities to use it as soon as possible. Keep your notes organised using flashcards or carry a small notebook that you can take out when you're not busy. Language blogger Benny Lewis describes a similar method as applied to movies in this post . Hope this helps. Keep up the good work Shunta!

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I have found that watching movies in English, with subtitles in your own language will be very helpful.

Answer

That sounds very interesting! I'm very happy to hear that you've enjoyed your stay
Listening to the many accents of English can be quite confusing to ones starting out but I'm sure with a solid foundation on the basics you'll be able to understand it in no time!

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Hi, Sarah! I enjoyed travel in Malaysia very much! Favorite place is Fraser's hill!
In fact, I stayed there with not only Malaysian but also people in various countries like Uzbekistan, Somalia, Egypt etc.
So I heard a lot of accent and felt difficult to understand all.

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Hi Shunta, as a fellow Malaysian here I hope you had a wonderful time during your stay!
I just wanted to point out, I don't know if you've been speaking with natives in English during your stay there but we have a very unique and non-standard way of speaking English, or as we call it, Manglish (a mix of Chinese and English and a bit of Malay here and there) Maybe that's why you had a bit of trouble understanding us? To be honest English is a second language to us so it's not quite a legit benchmark to measure your English  XD