People's expectation of what is considered "fluent" is very different and many different approaches can work. Regardless of where you are, there are things that

People's expectation of what is considered "fluent" is very different and many different approaches can work. Regardless of where you are, there are things that you can do. I am Vietnamese and studied English as a second language at 10 years old. I have been living in the US for the last 10 years -- 1/3 of my life. I have very little problems communicating in English now, but I want to give you a glimpse of how confident I am with my English. I used to know a professional interpreter who is not a native speaker either but has got an excellent grip on English. He interpreted for a couple of US presidents on their diplomatic trips. He often commented on my Facebook that my English is shit when I had Facebook. He would poke fun at my misspellings and grammatical errors. I still write, listen, and speak like a machine. If I remember it correctly, the translator fiend's advice to everyone was always that to read lots of books. His advice to learn to speak English was to go out and talk to the English expats. Many long for a friend, and you might learn a thing or two on the way. He did that when he was 20. I think those are a solid advice. For me, it was a little bit different. I think a big part of it is that I had an itch to do it. When I was younger, I learned English by reading MSDN + VB manuals because I needed to code. Then for a couple of years in HS, I lead an indie translation project to translate a couple of Harry Potter books to Vietnamese. My schedule was totally fucked up in the summer when the books came out: Sleep in until noon, then at night just translate 1/4 of a chapter or so, or proofread other people's translations until 6 AM. After that project, I wouldn't care if my English is not good anymore, I knew I've dealt with enough shit to not be intimidated by English. But in general, I think what works best is that you have to have a use for it. If you don't have a use for it, your work doesn't depend on it, then you need to have a hobby in which your English skill is needed to get the work done. Maybe you can make an impact or two along the way. It's just like to learn a new programming language or paradigm. Like now, I'm a professional HN commentator, and it requires some serious English skill, don't you see ;-)?