How tdo I improve my English? [BIG EDIT]

Read comics. It's how I learn languages. ;)

Play games and watch movies with subtitles. ALWAYS in English.

Just watch Wrestling. For example,when watching WWE you learn from teachers like:"Damien Sandow(the saviour of the masses)","Great Khali",and MORE!

For my Spanish, I found a partner who will speak Spanish with me and correct my Spanish and then we spoke English and I corrected his English.
The best one I know is italki.com

I've been using Duolingo on-and-off to learn French, and I've found it's quite useful. It has English courses, and if you have a microphone, you can also do pronunciation training with it.

I'm watching movies with subtitles - english or my national, polish. You can also play games with english dubbing. I think that listening English language everywhere you can is a big value. ;)

there is a chat called Paltalk that has a chatroom called "english practice room for people around the world". is very useful since you are ALWAYS listening and reading in english, also you can participate using your microphone, its free and the "teachers" are native speakers from different countries, so you can get used to the different accents, like american, british, australian..

Try playing the stanley parable! It has great narration and an engaging storyline which heavily revolves around the narration. It wouldn't be something to rely on alone to improve your English but it should help!

Movies and series with subtitles, and finding someone to speak with, in english, on site done for this :) Good luck and good travel !

Check out Duolingo, it seems to have a good system and it's free.

You could look for the software called 'Rosetta Stone' they have packages for a lot of language and it's a pretty nice way to learn a new language. It's normally pricy but can be found if you look around :P

Books, TV shows and movies will all help with vocabulary. Also, if you feel like it sounds right to your ear but you know you're pronunciation is off, consider recording yourself to see where the disconnect is.

You should not follow Doge's example (?)

Great thread. Definitely useful too for me.

Anyway, my main problem with English is the friggin' pronunciation. I know how to write a sentence (or article, for that matter) without even using my brain's power, but struggling to talk even on a daily convo. God knows how hard it is for me to say 'I'm going to toilet' literally.

Best way to improve english is to use a microphone and a voice recognition software. You repeat until the software recognizes exactly what you said correctly.

Go to an English school mate, is the best option, if you learn English independent will be hard to fix your errors in pronunciation, you need a teacher who fix and watch your progress, try a school mate :D

I'll tell you a surefire way: read novels. Many novels. Many, many novels. Doesn't haev to be a novel only, short books are not bad, but novels let you generally get a very good vocabulary. You also see how each sentence gets para phrased, and learn new words. It is an extremely better way than doing english tutorials and whatnot.

Also, novels are enjoyable if you pick the right ones :)

Invade America,force us to teach you!

Speak it and listen to people speak it. Consider their education, background, the situational reasons for speaking the way they do, and the reasons for saying it that way and not another. When you can do this, you'll be able to become fluent in any language and not one of those artificial audio recordings. ^^

www.rosettastone.com

Fellow italian here, ciao.
Since you don't seem to be bad with the language itself, work on your pronunciation mainly. Find somebody to talk to on skype (preferably native) and if you manage, practise alone (record and listen to yourself to notice any mistakes, both reading text and speaking freely). Before you do this, choose which accent to learn (RP/British or American - the others are less universally understood and usually not recognised if you want to take official tests and the like) and study their rules - use something with the IPA alphabet if possible, Wikipedia should be sufficient to learn the required letters easily enough and it will pay off for sure.

Things I do currently:

• reading Lord of the Rings
• watching English YouTube-Channels
• watching Series in English
• listening to BBC Radio 1
• talking to myself in English (+ translate words I dont know) <-- don't mind other people and their distressed gaze :P
• playing games in English
• reading news on BBC Homepage
• translating & writing down new & important words and phrases that I hear a lot + repeat them from time to time
• sitting in English classes in school^^
• what I've tried once was to write a "nonsense-Diary" in which I've written some weird stories never happened in my life including loads of (weird) word plays (first entry was about a "being the wettest contest" in my school - cause it was Wednesday..) - was fun, but then I wasn't in the mood anymore and stopped it^^

altogether I would advise to do (almost) everything that happens in your bedroom in English.. ;)

Yeah, watching TV shows and movies is best way. You'll learn stuff they don't teach at school. But please do me two favors: 1. Fix the title. 2. Don't say "Americans" on forums or anywhere else if you can. Americans are the ones who live in North, Central, South America and the Caribbean. Call them US citizens, please.

Pronounciation is not that important, just listen to Slavoj Žižek and you will find it. LEL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U88jj6PSD7w His accent is so bad, but you nearly can understand all what he says.