First of firsts, I have received tremendous helps from other people in learning English. However, it seems that nobody can tell me what I need to to exactly in this process. I am always stuck in such situations like this, I was suggested to practice pronunciation everyday, but I thought that I needed to read more rather than to speak in a certain period. On the other time, I was recommended to practice small talks, but I found I such practice didn't work well for me.
Keeping a strict routine is more important, on the other side, keeping a so strict routine is a time-wasting because there are many facets of learning English, and we should move on different ones.
What're your experiences?
I know exactly how you feel!
I was born and raised in Brazil (portuguese is my native language), and 7 years ago I moved to the USA for an exchange program speaking a very basic level of English. I lived with an amercian family, which is the best "school" you could ever ask for, but even though my English is fluent now I still learn new words every day.
The best way to improve your english is by immersing yourself in the language, as much as you can!!!
15 min a day 3 times a week will only keep you from forgetting what you already know. If you want to get better, Immerse yourself in it. Take as many lessons as you can, find language parters, speak to yourself if you have to (i did that haha), listen to music and podcasts, watch movies and tv shows in english (with english subtitles), read everything from novels to political news, everything!
Practice practice practice.
It's the ONLY way!
Good Luck :)
@All，
Thank you all for comments here. What I mean here is that I struggle with different things in learning English in different periods. Here are some instances. I don't know what I can get from my teachers. I decide quit one of me English courses in a English training centre because I can understand everything in those lessons, it seems that I cannot get anything new from there. On the other sides, I am still not confident with my English ability. One of facts is that I finds tons of new expressions/phrases when I read. When I try to express somethings around me, I find that there are tons of things that I cannot express exactly. I consulted with one of my teachers, she said that I need to improve my vocabulary comprehension.
I haven't stopped learning English. Some times I doubt that if I have spent too much time on learning language. When I look backward, I find that I really have achieved so much since two years ago.
Maybe you can make your own priorities what is important to you to improve based on your own criteria or based on reasons why you are learning English at all.
I am not sure if that's the case with you because I've never spoken to you, but I know that some Chinese native speaker struggle with pronunciation because English and Chinese are so different languages. I am sure that many English native speakers struggle how to pronounce Chinese words/sounds or how to write them, too. Our mother tongue has impact on how we speak a foreign language because we always tend to compare sounds to something that is familiar to us, but that doesn't mean that you can't work on your skills. There are good free sources even for that and if you want to practice it, you can just do it for short period of time (5 to 10 minutes per day), so it doesn't look like you are putting to much pressure on yourself. However, if you do it habitually, you'll have results.
I always try to work on all elements: writing, speaking, listening and I'm a bit behind with pronunciation, but that's my own choice. Many people told me that I am understandable enough, so I've chosen to work on something else instead of that for now. Of course, I don't recommend that as an excuse for being lazy and for doing nothing at all.
