What should I do to improve my vocabulary?
English

What should I do to improve my vocabulary?

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language learning
language exchanges

Hello, everyone!

So this is my first post and even though I was looking to just write in french since I started learning two days ago (as a resolution for 2021 hehe), I'm using french as a motivation to keep learning english as well.

As many of you: I watched Robin's video and decided to give this website a shot.

Regarding to my current level I'm quite good when it comes to listening, the problem is that I'm able to understand, for example, Youtubers from different countries and with different accents, but I'm not able to understand music nor films (at least not all the words and expressions, I need to rely on subtitles most of the time for films), and that's maybe the case because in films the language tends to be more refined and Youtubers tend to speak in a more basic way with a different set of words. Despite that, I'm quite confident when it comes to understand most of the things I hear, for instance, I'm able to learn in the language (by watching videos and reading) and that's fine to me. The problem is that I feel like I stumbled upon a plateau. For different reasons I don't enjoy that much english, or maybe I feel like it's like a job and for that reason it's quite difficult to me to fill the gaps I have regarding the language (I also have to add that I learnt it in a messy way so I lacked the basics (probably I still do until now)).

I think writing is a skill I've never put on practice so probably writing my thoughts and experiences in here might help a little bit.

In spite of what I just said in the end of that long paragraph from before, I decided to learn english in all the moments I feel tired of french. For now I'm reading two books which I'd probably talk about in other entries in the future.

Anyway, the thing is that I had the following question: What should I do to improve my vocabulary?

A couple of weeks ago I decided to speak in my native language and just start translating all those useful words and phrases I use the most, when I get to read a book, sometimes I feel like translating some words but in other times I just ignore them for the sake of avoid stopping every single minute to look up the given words.

About my speech skills I gotta say that I'm not quite confident about it, I don't have anyone to practice with (I'm kinda reluctant in practicing with someone I don't know Online since I don't know if they're gonna be commited to practice seriously), so I have to rely on myself.

The thing is that, adding everything I just said, I'm able to speak with myself for 1 to 2 hours about different topics, but, when it comes to talk with people I usually doubt about the words I should use, I simply don't know what word to use at all or I simply become numb and insecure (this is specially the case since one day somebody was mad at me, I tried to speak in english for the sake of privacy in front of my family and this person yelled to me: "Shut up, you don't know how to talk in english!", and despite this person was mad and I understand that, it kinda affected to me a little bit, so I'm more insecure when it comes to speaking for that reason lol).

Well, at the end my question is a rethorical question since I feel I know what I need to do. In fact if somebody is interested in language exchanging and is interested in become more fluent in Spanish (from Latin America) we could figure something out.

As my final thought I have to say that the thing I lack the most is the use of phrasal verbs, probably you'll notice I didn't use (m)any of them on this text.

So: I'll make use of this website, I'll try to write daily and... I guess that's it.

Any suggestions and/or comments would be much appreciated, the things I put in italics are the stuff I don't feel confident about, probably there are better ways to say what I tried to say. Thanks for reading me!

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