| I would have listen more carefully at school if only I had known... Meh... I doubt most native speakers of English learned the actual grammar of English, as used in practice, from listening in school. You learn English (or any language) from experience, more than anything. I couldn't recite many or any of the "rules" of English as taught in 11th grade English class, but I speak English fluently because it's my native language. I'm not an expert, but everything I've heard suggests that - in the end - the best way to learn a new language is immersion. Or the closest approximation to immersion you can get, without moving to another country or whatever. When I was working on learning Spanish at one time (an effort that I, sadly, more or less abandoned) the things that seemed to help me most were: 1. Having a Spanish speaking friend who was a native Spanish speaker to talk to 2. Trying (and failing, but gradually getting better) to converse with the wait staff at Mexican restaurants in Spanish. 3. A couple of nights a week, watching an hour or two of Spanish language sit-coms or whatever I could find on Telemundo or Univision. 4. Listening to my Spanish course while I was driving around, commuting to work and so forth. I never got around to trying, but I suspect it would also have helped if I'd found some good Spanish language podcasts, or news channels, to listen to during other idle times. |
Do not worry, I am not obsessed with grammar. It would just give me some tools to judge objectively about my level. I had like 4 hours a week of english for 10 years, that's 1400 hours I think. I just lost those hours for nothing