A long way to go Hi! I'm afraid I made more mistakes in writing this than I would have liked to, so... if you find any mistakes or unnatural sentences, please suggest an alternative. Thank you very much. I know that there is still a long, long way to go before actual fluency, and that means years of constant hard, and sometimes menial, work. Regarding the “constant” bit, I don't have the slightest concern because I have somehow managed to make of English my main language, without overlooking the fact that I live in a Spanish-speaking country and that along with that come certain limitations, for which I have already found a way around: I can't, for example, go to a restaurant and expect the server to speak to me in English. I can, however, pay close attention to what it says and revise my knowledge to see if I can come up with a natural translation . if I'm satisfied, then I go on as if nothing had happened. If not, as soon as I have a chance, I write down the "chunk" of conversation that I didn't know how to translate, to look it up later on and, finally, fill the gap, as I like to think of it. Now, the menial part has nothing of menial to me. It's something I enjoy as few other things: constantly using a dictionary, being on the lookout for words or expressions that I don't know the meaning of, or that I would like to incorporate into my vocabulary, stepping out of my comfort zone by not allowing myself to think in my native language, and that kind of stuff.