Practice, a dictionary (or two as you've described) and audio material, plus a good teacher are the essentials :) Good job! :)

#Dictionaries are important tools - part2 Go back to why I prefer the Longman dictionary, the second reason. It does provide collocation as well as how is the word you're looking up commonly used in different meanings or situations. This is super useful for me to know how I can use a particular vocabulary. Many other dictionaries do provide collocation and how to use the words, but so far I think the Longman dictionary is still my first choice because of its comprehensiveness. For example, after I check the dictionary, I won't use the word 'suggest' in this way: 'I suggest you to use a monolingual dictionary when learning a language.'. The third reason, I prefer the Longman dictionary merely out of habit. It seems not a very useful point, and you're right. As I mentioned in the disclaimer above, all dictionaries are good as long as they give you what you want. As in my first sentence today, dictionaries act as tools in our language learning, so it is good that you're familiar with your tools, the tools that you're using all the time. Lastly, I would like to add something in order not to mislead anyone, especially the beginner. You can go for any dictionary that you think it's good for you. No one dictionary is so-called 'the best' dictionary. Sometimes, I do consult more than one dictionary in order to get what I want. All right, these are my sharings today, I hope you leave a comment so that I can know what are your thoughts. Thank you for coming to my blog and thank you again for leaving a comment. Goodbye and have a nice day!