What is necessary to learn English well?

Changing your life

Learning English requires action. You may know all the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve nothing. The fact is, if you want to learn to speak English well, you must <em>change your life</em>. Here are some examples of things you will have to do:

<ul> <li>read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing the grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary</li> <li>listen to an audiobook or other recording in English, stopping it frequently, trying to understand what is being said, and trying to imitate the speaker's pronunciation</li> <li>spend 30 minutes in the afternoon practicing the pronunciation of the English "r" sound</li> <li>carefully write an e-mail message in English, using a dictionary or a Web search every 20 seconds to make sure every word is correct, and taking 5 minutes to write one sentence</li> <li>think about an English sentence you've read, wondering if it could say "a" instead of "the" in the sentence, and trying to find similar sentences on the Web to find out the answer</li> <li>walk down the street and build simple English sentences in your head (talking to yourself in English about the things you see around you)</li> </ul>

What kind of person would do all these crazy things? Only one kind. <em>The kind of person who enjoys doing them.</em> If you want to learn to speak English well, you're going to have to become that person. Have you ever heard of anyone who became successful by doing something he hated?