GIVE ANSWERS - English

A lot of effort, practice, time and feedback. Effort must be consistent. An hour a day is better than 7 hours in one day per week. It takes over one year to get to a point where you are having ”meaningful” conversations.

People claiming that you ”can become fluent in English in 6 weeks or 3 months” are talking nonsense. In that time, you can perhaps ask and answer simple questions, or possibly learn 400 or 500 words if you are working constantly and hard. Think in English when you use English! Translation is the lazy way, but in the end will stop you from getting beyond a basic level of language.

Practice with someone. If you can’t get a native speaker, get someone much more proficient than you who is willing to tell you your mistakes. Sometimes, a very good non-native speaker is a better option to practise with than a native speaker of English. If a native speaker of English is not speaking a dialect of English which is standard, such as standard British English or standard American English, then you might end up speaking a non-standard dialect of English and afterwards have some difficulties understanding a standard English speaker. Make sure that when you learn something, that you fix your mistakes as soon as possible. If mistakes remain, they become part of your ”natural” language and are afterwards difficult to fix.

Don’t just learn grammar rules but understand why they work. Then you can actually use them when you speak or write.

Avoid translation between your native language and English! Anyone teaching English professionally - even at the beginner level - who relies on a lot of translation between another language and English in order to teach English is probably not a genuine English language teacher.