Poor active vocabulary - frequent problem? How to build it up? (It would be great if you'd comment this post, not just correct it...) I think I'm not the only one with this problem. At school, our teachers emphasised grammatics and learning words by heart. That was also the main part of tests. We did only a little of hearing exercises and very few speaking activities. On the one hand, this helped me to get through some english books, learn from english textbooks on the university, I've also read plenty of articles in the internet... That helped me improve my passive vocabulary. Nevertheless, I didn't understand spoken word a lot - I realized that at watching movies (despite understanding english subtitles without any problem). So, I watched some sitcoms, many movies, some podcasts... And my hearing comprehension improved a lot. My speaking skills are still very poor. At this time, I don't care a lot about pronunciation. I just have to shift some passive vocabulary to the active one. I hope you know what I'm talking about. Do you know some exercises, webpages or books that would help broaden the active vocabulary? There is a Czech e-book named "Speak as a spokesman" with plenty of interestening exercises and tongue twisters. They help native speakers build up the active vocabulary. (This helps e.g. by oral exams, it improves expressing ideas... It just enhances your speaking skills a lot.) Is there something similar for English? I know that the best way to improve speaking is to speak, but now I really don't have any opportunities... (If you have the same problem, you can contact me and we can talk a bit via skype or msn...)