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Patryk
Hi, guys! I am writing because I need advice from you. I have been learning English for 15 (?) years, and I am afraid that I have stumbled at one level. I do not have any troubles with speaking. I can explain everything what I want, but it is not grammar correct in 100% (I think it is about 60/70%). I also have lots of troubles with writing. Writing is my biggest pain. I do not have problems with reading texts to B2 level. What I do to improve my language skills? Speaking one hour per week with a native speaker, watching Netflix with English subtitles, learning 20 minutes every day online platform, reading a book in English (2 pages per day). My target is to achieve C1 level and be fluent in writing and speaking. I want to feel confident when I will be working in English. How to break the deadlock? Thanks for the advice!

Answers · 9

2
An easy solution: 1) Buy a novel in English, from America or from England. The book must be paper, not digital! (It should be a recent novel so that the language is modern, so no Shakespeare! Haha) 2) Take a notebook and a pen, and copy the entire novel by hand. Write it all down on paper, word by word. 3) It is ok if you don't understand everything. Your brain will learn all the patterns of written English as you copy, and copy, and copy. This is very relaxing too. Almost like a type of meditation. I have done this with 2 languages. This will break your deadlock.
1
I would say regularly conversation practice, most students regardless of their level are able to interpret well through reading and writing but to put the actual grammar and sentence structure to test during speaking they often struggle with because they do not have frequent opportunities to practically make use of their English speaking skills. Most students are only confident about their speaking during their English lessons but once the lesson ends they struggle with their pronunciation or structure and wording of sentences.
0
Doing all that you listed is certainly to be recommended, since you certainly want to immerse yourself in the language as much as possible if you cannot spend much time in a country where the language is native. You said your grammar skills are at about the 60-70% level, so that‘s something you will definitely want to work on. Find a good book on grammar and study it since you won’t acquire good grammatical skills from passive learning (listening to movies, YouTube clips, etc). (You’ll hear grammar properly spoken, but you won’t be able to remember or apply it.)Grammar is the formula you apply to put all the words together properly to speak correctly. In your case I’d put grammatical learning above vocabulary building- although both are important- since it’s there that you seem to need to make progress. And learning grammar will progress faster than vocabulary building, since grammar is fairly limited in what there is to know. By contrast, vocabulary is endless and even native speakers learn new words throughout their entire lives. Hope this helps.
0
I think learning collocations helps *a lot* because they're chunks of speech that won't change from sentence to sentence and once you learn them, you don't really have to think about them. I know it's oversimplifying it, but I think a lot of language comes down to filling in gaps between collocations, i.e. set phrases. Clozemaster and Reverso Context have helped me a lot when it comes to learning these phrases in Polish. Reverso Context gives you tons of examples of whatever you want. For example, you can look up "when it comes to" and see all the ways it's used and how it translates back into Polish. Then you can add some of these sentences (one definitely isn't enough) to Clozemaster (or probably to whatever flashcard-type app you use) and make the entire phrase the blank you fill in, rather than just one word. I use the text-to-speech feature and find that that helps too.

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