How many hours do you practise English on an average?

Why isn't the word "tense" spelt "tence" in British English

I think " Practise" is the verb form and "practice" is the noun form, right?

e.g.

I practise piano every day.
I have my piano practice every day.

Hi Everyone

Great to see so much of activity going on in the discussion-thread I started. Hope more learners would share their learning experiences.


Hi Shogo
I'm afraid you haven't understood the point - by practise, I mean practising to speak in spoken English - just Spoken English alone. This means I'd be shouting at the top of my voice for 3 hours or more, practising the pronunciations of individual words, or spoken expressions - each one of them several times. And I meant that I had started this practise 15 months back. The point is - I started learning English right from my first day in school, but that hardly helped - because that is written English. Yes believe me, spoken English and written English are worlds apart. After having finished my school and graduation, I found out that I still couldn't speak a few sentences in "proper" English, and so I started this exercise. I don't think it would help you if you count on just watching TV, or reading newspapers. Just like people go to the gym and target specific muscles and develop them, I've been targetting "Spoken English" specifically and working on it.

Hi Boy
Fifteen months ago, I was exactly in your position - I had hardly spoken a few sentences (or to put it properly, I could hardly speak a few sentences). That was why I embarked on this process. Of course, I can understand when you say that you lost your sleep over your compliments. It happens with me too...

Hi Monnio,

Do you just spend time on practising individual words or expressions? Or do you talk to yourself as well?

Hi Monnio.

I'm glad to see someone who has been through very similar stages as me.
I've been a fool not to emphaise on my speaking aspect and now I'm paying the consequenses.

Well, just recently I started realise how important it is to speak properly and I'm doing about 2 hours a day to train my muscles and tongue to adapt to English sound. I'm not doing much on vocabulary or grammar if at all.
I also ordered the fluentzy material which I'm eagerly waiting for its arrival.

Well, yesterday my jaw muscles hurt because I was moving it very hard and it felt good :) but I'm yet to see any improvement, as I'm only reading indivisual words not a sentence yet..

Do you have any advice you can give me as I'm not entirely sure where I'm going and how I should do this..

Hi Monnio, could you tell me again about what you're doing now? I still don't understand about what you're doing. How do you do that? Speaking alone? Do you take an English words from a book, and then you speak them?

Hi Everyone!

I'm happy to see so much of interest learners have developed in this topic.

To Boy:
I spent over 8 months practising the most important words in English. I've been practising expressions, phrases, questions etc ever since. It is not exactly talking to oneself - but practising aloud. Talking to oneself in English would be a good idea - but you'd first have to master Spoken English - otherwise you'd start practising in all the wrong ways and make a mess of things.

To Paul M
There are two important things that you should take care of:
(1) If you want to get an "accent" like the natives, you'll have to master the individual words (their pronunciations) - and this I feel is the most difficult part. I spent over 8 months on this (and still do). If you don't practise the individual words for some time, you'd lose that accent a bit.

(2) If you don't want the accent, but just want to speak fluent English, you could straight away jump into your course material. You may find it tough though, but don't be deterred. The material is so rich in content that the progress would be really, really slow - but sure. If you give up because you feel there is no progress, it is all an utter waste of time and money.

Hi Dian
I mastered the individual words (and still do) using a computer dictionary (you can go for any multimedia dictionary). I learn expressions from dictionaries, and I'm practising hard with a course material I obtained from www.fluentzy.com

Hi Monnio!

Unfortunately, the website you refer is not a free English course.

I think the website you refer to is a direct competitor for antimoon. I mean because they also sell English course modules.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Hi Dian!

You may be right about the competition factor - but you have to understand that I'm not here to advertise their products or services - I only shared my experience with learners eager to learn English. I've tried it and it works well with me - and I don't say that it is the only way to learn English - you may follow any course material you like if you feel it is good enough - it is just that the method I told you was the one I tried, and the one I liked and about which I'm entirely satisfied, and the one that has worked wonders with me.

Looks like people shouldn't reveal their hard-earned secrets. Well, I won't anymore, at least.