Improve English skills

[marvin92]

Hey
I'm trying to improve my English skills and I'm not really sure, what can help me.
Just reading or are there other possibilities?

[Gravity]

First of all, you should read the other topics here. There are many useful tips about how to improve your English, because everyone wants to know that.
Reading is very helpful. Listening also helps to get used to hearing English. But it's not enough. It's just one part of the improvement. You develop your skills to understand when someone is talking to you. You have to talk. It's very important. You should find a penfriend. I think that's the best way to relax and start speaking fluently.

[kölscheklüngel]

Hi Gravity,

you wrote this Text months ago, but I read it today first time. You make good possibilities to improve English. I read a few topics in the last days and I learned a lot of new words. If you will find a penfriend you make a big point for getting better in English. Practice is best you can do.

Bye Alexander

[tiorthan]

Hi Gravity,

you wrote this Text months ago, but I read it for the first time today₁. You gave some good advice₂ to improve English. I read a few topics during the last days and I have₃ learned a lot of new words. If you can find a penfriend you make a big point₄ for getting better in English. Practice is the best you can do.

Bye Alexander

1 - Adverbs of frequency (how often?) come before adverbs of time (when?).
Alternatively you could have said something like I just read it today or I havn't read it before.

2 - "you make good possibilities" sounds weird and would be understood as "stellst gute möglichkeiten zur Verfügung" which he didn't.

3 - Use the present perfect to express things that happened in the past but have an influence on the present. - After all, you still know those words, don't you?

4 - Unfortunately, I don't understand what you mean here.

[eeboot]

What worked (and still works) for me is to prepare for the TOEFL test. Even if you do not want to do the actual test the preparation material is also suited for enhancing the language skill. The most preparation material contains practises with possible solutions for all four basic skills (reading, writing, speaking, hearing). Especially in the reading exercises you see plenty of vocabulary which is most likely new to you and which you should try to memorize. Additionally, the texts offers a large varity of topics and you can train to understand readings about textes which you may know nothing about even without understanding every single word.
If you are willing to invest money for improving you english it may be wise to invest it in some TOFEL preparation kits. Those are usually worth the money (in my opinion).

Speaking or training conversational english is harder to train since you need someone who speaks with you. This person should be preferentially having english as native language or at least being able to speak english well with a strong sence for grammatically correctness. It is hard to unlearn worngly learned things. For the simple listing skill watching english movies and tv shows are sure a good choice. If you did not understand some parts of the conversation you can rewind and hear again and use in the worst case the subtitle to get the exact spelling of the words to look them up in the dictionary.

[tiorthan]

What worked (and still works) for me is to prepare for the TOEFL test. Even if you do not want to do the actual test the preparation material is also suited for enhancing the language skill. Most preparation material contains practises with possible solutions for all four basic skills (reading, writing, speaking, hearing). Especially in the reading exercises you see plenty of vocabulary which is most likely new to you and which you should try to memorize. Additionally, the texts offer a large varity of topics and you can train to understand readings about textes₁ which you may know nothing about even without understanding every single word.
If you are willing to invest money for improving your English it may be wise to invest it in some TOFEL preparation kits. Those are usually worth the money (in my opinion).

Speaking or training conversational english is harder to train since you need someone who speaks with you. This person should be preferentially speak₂ English as native language or at least be able to speak English well with a strong sense for grammatically correctness. It is hard to unlearn wrongly learned things. For the simple listening skills watching English movies and tv shows is surely a good choice. If you do not understand some parts of the conversation you can rewind and listen to it again and use in the worst case the subtitles in the worst case to get the exact spelling of the words to look them up in the dictionary.

1 - I don't understand what you mean by that.

2 - "to have a language" is nonstandard (it's Hiberno English actually)

[kölscheklüngel]

Hi together,

who can explain the different or when I use: "should", "shouldn't" and "must"