This is a bit complicated, but I'll do my best to cover everything. I'll start with 'can'. 'Can' essentially indicates ability. Usually it's used for general ability, although nowadays more and more people also use it to indicate permission. For example: He can play piano. I can drive a car. Can you come to the party tomorrow? The past tense of 'can' is 'could'. For example: He could play piano when he was a child. I could drive a car when I was 16 years old. Here's where it gets tricky - 'could' is also used to indicate possibility or talk about options. It usually indicates about 50% certainty and means that something may or may not happen. For example: I could go to the party tonight if I wanted to. Where's John? I don't know, he could be upstairs. Take an umbrella, it could rain later. 'Could' is also used to ask for permission or request favors politely. For example: Could you get me a glass of water? Could I use your pen? The past tense of 'could' is 'could have' (often shortened to could've) and because of the 'have' it takes the participle form of the verb. When used in the past it has the connotation that there was the option to do something in the past, but that action was not taken. For example: I could have gone to the party yesterday. (But I didn't) He could have told her the secret. (But he didn't) Lastly, 'managed to' has the very specific meaning that the subject was able to do something that was very difficult or unlikely. For example: There was a fire in the building, but everyone managed to evacuate safely. The police managed to catch the bank robbers yesterday. I stayed up all night studying and managed to pass my history test. Hope that was clear and not too overwhelming. If you need any clarifications let me know!

Speak more, speak better?

Recently I've been trying to talk to other people in English, however I find it's very difficult. If I had time to write down the sentences I could write them well with only a few mistakes, but if I have to talk to others and respond quickly I usually make many mistakes, especially in grammar. Also I find that I don't know enough vocabulary. This makes my speaking in English even harder. I'm not sure if I should think over my words before I say ('speak' works but 'say' is more natural) them, which will make me slow in responding to others, or just speak out my opinions even though there might be lots of grammar mistakes. I wonder if practicing itself will lead to improvement in English speaking?
Has anyone had this kind of experience before or does anyone have any suggestions?
Please leave a comment.
(Corrections are also very welcomed : ) )

 

I think this is a common problem for a lot of people. The best thing to do is just do your best and not worry about making mistakes. Personally I love making mistakes because that's how I get corrections and corrections are how I improve.

As far as building vocabulary, reading a lot is a great way to improve. I also like Anki (<a href="http://ankisrs.net/">http://ankisrs.net/</a>) for memorizing new words efficiently.

Good luck! Don't worry about mistakes or going slow and keep practicing with native speakers whenever you can.

All three are about equal in my opinion, the last one being in past continuous (was watering) could make it have different connotations depending on the context but other than that they're all fine.

"Develop" means to progress, grow or move something forward. Usually it has the connotations of being a gradual process where something is slowly improved or built upon over time. e.x., We need to develop a plan for learning English. "Exploit" means to take advantage of, or to utilize a weakness in something to get an advantage. It usually has slightly negative connotations as it tends to indicate you're using a flaw or a weakness to get an unfair advantage in something. It's not always negative though. e.x., I exploited a bug in the program to beat the game. or You can exploit iTalki by asking native speakers to do your English homework. Hope that helps!

I would suggest practicing with music, as well as using things like Forvo and RhinoSpike to get audio samples of native speakers to mimic. This article has some ideas/techniques that you may find helpful: http://www.fluentin3months.com/rap/ Hope that helps!

Story of Japanise kanji

Look at kanji image 1. What does it mean? It means 'a rice plant'.
Kanji image 2's meaning is 'a hand'.
Does it seem like a hand to you?

Well then, look at kanji image 3.
What is this kanji's meaning?

This kanji means 'to shave a rice plant'.

I've always considered learning a language to be like learning to swim. You can study swimming all you want, but you'll never get good until you get in the pool. The same goes for language - if you want to get good at English you have to start practicing speaking with people. My best advice is to make as much of your day to day life as possible be in English. Watch English TV, read English books / news and listen to English music in combination with speaking sessions with natives. The easiest way to learn it is to live it.

The first sentence, "She was just putting on a cockney accent for effect, though she wasn't," suggests that she's using the accent to emphasize something or accentuate her point. 'For effect' here means 'done to add emphasis'. In the other two, "She was just pretending a cockney accent for drawing attention, though she wasn't," and "She was just pretending a cockney accent for attracting attention, though she wasn't," the meaning comes across that she is using the accent not to emphasize her point, but to make or encourage people to look at her and pay attention to her. 'To draw attention' and 'to attract attention' both mean to encourage people to pay attention to you. One other note I'd like to make is in American English we normally don't use 'pretending' with a noun, we follow it with an infinitive. You could also use 'imitating'. Additionally we don't say 'for drawing attention' or 'for attracting attention' - 'to draw attention' and 'to attract attention' sound better. So that would be: She was pretending to have a Cockney accent to attract attention, though she wasn't. She was pretending to have a Cockney accent to draw attention, though she wasn't. or She was imitating a Cockney accent to attract/draw attention, though she wasn't.