Personally, want you can do to get a good grasp of a language - Pt 2 Oral - Of course, that's half the story, the other person also needs to understand what you are saying and hence your pronunciations and speed of delivery needs to be decent. So talk with anyone as much as you can, don't be shy of making mistakes or be ashamed of being corrected. There should be absolutely no place for shyness, shame, ego or pride in learning. Just brainwash yourself into thinking that you'r an asshole if you are embarrassed of correction, instead try being genuinely humble and thankful for it. When you are studying and writing say things out aloud to yourself. When reading, read texts aloud. Never miss an opportunity to say things aloud to yourself. If you have been listening well then that itself will solve pronunciation problems for you, or at least you will have an idea of what its supposed to sound like and correct yourself. Reading - Read children's books and comics as much as you can. Comics are a boon because they have more natural everyday style dialogues with accompanied storyboard situations with basic expressions , etc. From Archie's to DC to Marvel to Scanlated awesome Japanese Mangas… Pick your drug of choice :D Mine are Mangas :P. Once you have a decent grasp incorporate children's fiction from Basic story books to teen stuff from there you can move on to novels , etc. "The Guardian" has a brilliant section of british children's fiction :) Writing - SImple thing, Whatever you can speak, read and understand you should be able to write. If you can't then it means you are doing it wrong. Whenever studying grammar and vocabulary, practice writing everything that you learn. You will retain it better and properly with its spellings. This is my one regret from the days of learning french. My writing is simply not strong enough and my spellings are terrible. Something which I wish not to repeat with my spanish now. But my biggest redeeming quality is my pronounciation and I pride myself for it. It's my way paying my respects to a language, when it comes out of my mouth it comes out as authentic as possible. But i was also lucky being brought up with phonetically three completely different languages my tongue is used to making many different type or sets of sounds. :) Shit! I have typed all this useful info guess i'll put it in my notebook so that i can share it with someone else in the future. Anyway, best of luck. :)