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I´ve been learning English since I was 6. I´ve always lived in Turkey, and I had many useless teachers. In spite of all the time wasted due to incompetent tutoring, by the time I started high school, my English grades was better than most of my friends.
In high school, I didn´t learn anything. There was a shortage of English teachers. Therefore, %60 of the time that was supposed to go into English lessons in all three years I´ve spent in high school, we did nothing at all. There was no teacher. We were free to do whatever we wanted as long as we stayed in the school. This is especially important because my high school is one of the best and most famous state-owned high schools. Apparently, the best in Turkey doesn´t always mean good. Turkish Education 101.
As for the remaining %40, that was also wasted. Even worse than before high school.
Then, after high school, I lived in southern England for eight months. One would think that would help a lot, right? No. Being surrounded by foreigners learning the language is not a good setting to learn a language. Asians were the worst. Every time I spoke with my Asian friends, I felt my fluency being sucked away, along with a bit of my life energy. (They were so nice though, it compensates for the difficult communication. I still keep in touch.)
However, I must have managed to pick some stuff up. I had to attend a language school (full of Asians) but I spent quite some time with British people as well. Also, through briefly trying to learn my friends´ languages - Spanish, German, Korean, French, Italian, Kazakh, Russian - I gained some insight on how to learn a language. That was the time I realized I was doing it wrong.
The real learning occured after England. As you know, the internet develops and develops. So I started spending a lot of time online. Very easy if you are procrastinating. This is an awful thing to do. However, there was one great thing about it: My fluency sky-rocketed. Stuff I watched was almost always in English. Also, I developed a habit of talking to myself in English, which contributed further. And I had a lot of chances to speak English. Hosting couchsurfers, travelling abroad etc. I couldn´t believe how well I could communicate.
At the moment, my English is enough for practical purposes. I don´t study anymore. I´d start studying again only if I had an exam coming. I am slowly improving my vocabulary anyway. I use English everyday. If I´m having a hard time when I´m;
- Trying to read fast. Unfortunately, I can´t read English as fast as I can read Turkish.
- Having a conversation in high ambient noise. Pubcrawl with Americans turned into me nodding at whatever they say.
- Watching some stuff. Inbetweeners for example. They talk slang with heavy British accents and they even invent words (i.e. "bumder"  ). I feel like I missed a lot of good jokes. Another example would be Casino Royale - spies using fancy words to look sophisticated and intimidating. Also some old movies, from 50s or 60s. I use English subtitles if available.
- Scots & Irish. I watched Billy Connoly´s stand-up without subtitles, missed lots of words. But maybe because it wasn´t very funny in the first place.
- Reading a text with complex vocabulary. I´ve grown so accustomed to not seeing the words I don´t know, it actually keeps me from spotting and learning new vocabulary.
- Imitating accents. I still have a Turkish accent. Can´t talk just like an American, or Scot. (I´d like to have a Scottish accent )
If you have any tips on how to improve any of these, then please. Share.
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