Personally, want you can do to get a good grasp of a language - Pt 1 You need to immerse yourself in the language and its culture. There is only so much you can do with just plain language devoid of the culture of people who speak it. Hence the need to immersion into their culture should be your Prime focus. Basically create or simulate an environment within which you can live the language and its culture. You basically take a significant chunk of time from your regular life and use it to live this simulated life. And there is no other way around this. This is the only way. Since you want to go to University I presume you will have to tackle all aspects of the language, which are listening,reading, writing and oral. Listening happens when you are in conversation with people and then here is News channels, radio, movies, TV series, etc. Switch over - Stop watching your regional prime time television and watch British television Or American television. Watch as much movies as possible like with channels like HBO, StarMovies, etc. Watch television dramas , etc. Background noise - This is very important. This is needed for you to pick up pronunciation and understanding accents. Whenever you are free or when you are cooking or eating just put a news channel in the background and just let it run, you should be able to hear it clearly. First it may all be one big Blah… blah blah…!!! But as your mind is constantly exposed to the sounds or phonetics, in a month you will notice you can HEAR a lot more than before. Because your brain was constantly exposed to the pronunciation sounds it will form patterns , etc., and recognize them better as you go on. THis helps immensely when speaking with native speakers and listen to what they are saying at their normal speed, thus improving the quality of your conversation immensely. When i was learning french, me and my friends used to run the french channel "TV5" from morning until night. :D We used to wake up to it, eat with it, study with it except sleep with it… !