Ask HN: How did you become fluent in English?

I studied in Tamil medium. When I entered college, I could not speak a sentence in English. Here are the things that helped me.

1. Read Bible cover to cover many time with a Tamil Bible side-by-side. I didn't understand many of the words / phrases. Still I kept reading as long as I understood the meaning.

2. In college we met every evening for prayer. I started sharing messages for few minutes. I made lot (a lot) of mistakes, but my friends helped me improve. Lot of folks made fun of me, but I still kept going because two of close friends kept encouraging me.

3. Watched Friends series with sub-titles. I didn't understand many of the dialogues because I lacked context. Still I would memorize sentences and repeat to myself.

4. Started writing a blog[]. The one I have currently is 2nd or 3rd one. In the first blog, I wrote primarily about what I knew well - SQL, Vantive etc. So the content was there, I had to only find ways to express it. Even now, I write about what I know or what I learn, so that makes it easier to blog.

: https://jjude.com

5. When I read articles or books, I note down the sentences or phrases I like. I store them in Evernote and re-visit them often. I try to use them in some daily usage.

Next month I will deliver a keynote speech in Azure global bootcamp in my city (Chandigarh). From not able to speak a sentence in English to this, has been a long journey of frustration, encouragement, and satisfaction.

Good luck.

If you make your learning less like "learning" you will have great chance of learning anything new. Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing (not necessarily in any order) are key to improving your language skills. Pick few subjects that you are reasonably excited about. Movies, Technology, Fashion, Current Affairs, Religion, Music, Designing... basically anything that do not bore you and spend some time finding channels that talk/write about these. Make sure you are able to spend at least a decent amount of time everyday watching/listening/reading about those.

I had very poor English language speaking skills even after I completed my college. I took it as a challenge and made sure I spent at least 15 minutes every day listening English news (I live in India and this was some 20 years ago, so the options were very limited back then) Read English news papers for about 30 minutes, and always noted down new words and their meaning and kept referring to those when I wasn't preoccupied anything else.. .those notes used to stay with me for few days before I threw those away for newer ones. Also, moving to Bangalore helped me a lot because, many of my new friends didn't share my mother tongue so English was our primary communication medium. Thinking about it, it was kinda boring to be honest, I dont know if i will do the same for learning any other language, but I was really motivated to learn English back then so that probably kept me going.

Interesting feedback, but the deed is already done.

Also it worked well for him. Thus, I assume any method would be met with your derision.

Not to mention there are natural english versions of the Bible, so you are casting that one.

Watch YouTube video and pickup some public speaking skills including learning how to debate.

TED.com is my favourite channels.