The author mentions that he spent a lot of time using English without ever listening to it. A big problem is the way English( or languages) are taught or learnt

The author mentions that he spent a lot of time using English without ever listening to it. A big problem is the way English( or languages) are taught or learnt that causes these problems. One trick/method that I used while perfecting my German accent was shadowing that I found in a lanaguage forum somewhere. I took a book that I understood in the target language, in this case it was Agatha Christie's Murder on the Links; bought the audio book ( Mord auf dem Links), then repeated after the reader at pace without looking at the text. It was tiring mentally sometimes, but it helped greatly in pronunciation and aural comprehension of the target langauge. I did the same for movies. I remember getting the Matrix in German. Technical writing is different I guess but I hope this helps someone, at the very least, in acquiring an idiomatic proficiency.