I just thought of something when listening to the part about improving your English. When I took Biology in college, the professor told us that someone had determined that the average student had to learn 1200 new words in first year biology. So even fluent native speakers always have new words to learn when they enter a new subject. You might be able to talk with classmates perfectly during the day, but if you're asked to read the business section of the newspaper, the vocabulary could prevent you from understanding. That's OK - everyone has the same problem. With the internet, you don't even need a dictionary these days, but one thing I would suggest of a book of English expressions. Sometimes you can figure out expressions from context, but other times they make no sense. Just reading a few expressions every day would help in real life English. It helped me with Spanish.
I just thought of something when listening to the part about improving your English. When I took Biology in college, the professor told us that someone had determined that the average student had to learn 1200 new words in first year biology. So even fluent native speakers always have new words to learn when they enter a new subject. You might be able to talk with classmates perfectly during the day, but if you're asked to read the business section of the newspaper, the vocabulary could prevent you from understanding. That's OK - everyone has the same problem. With the internet, you don't even need a dictionary these days, but one thing I would suggest of a book of English expressions. Sometimes you can figure out expressions from context, but other times they make no sense. Just reading a few expressions every day would help in real life English. It helped me with Spanish.