What WORKS, and really made a huge difference for you?

That's funny. I know a German who always seems to leave out L's from English words when he speaks.

He might be trying to compensate for the difference? Since they figure they cannot hear many of our Ls when we speak German, perhaps he s not pronouncing them when he speaks English and thinks it sounds better than he would otherwise by using his German style L. Actually the L sound in some Austrian dialects are closer to our L than the normal German one.

We native English speakers (especially North Americans and Irish) are notorious for not being able to pronounce the letter R properly in German. When I was there I found my pronunciation was improved by replacing my R-sound with something that sounded like a Boston or Brooklyn R. (Closer to an A sound) It seemed to help a bit.