You certainly need to invest some money in grammar books and perhaps a CD or computer programmes. But the main thing you need to invest is your time and energy. Learning a new language is by no means an easy task and to master it, it takes years of effort. But with the right mindset, you will pick up the basics before you know it.
Make a friend

Try and make a friend who you can communicate with and use each other to practice with. Imagine a French or Spanish person who is similar to you. You can write letters to each other and then correct the grammar or go over pronunciation together on Skype. The possibilities are endless.
The Media

Everybody has a laptop or access to the internet, use it to your advantage when trying to learn a language. There are hordes of terrible grammar exercises out there – so beware. But if you just log on to the reputable sites then you will discover the diamonds in the rough. It is also worth taking a look at news websites, films, television programmes and podcasts from the language’s country.
Take an evening class

Once you have got the basics locked down, you need to put it into practice. There are hundreds of classes all over the country and these are the perfect ways to improve your basic understanding of a language. Once you’ve finished the day’s French or Spanish courses London or whichever city you live in is on your doorstep and you can continue with your regular life.
Study abroad

Once you have become competent in your Spanish or French classes London or wherever you’re based is just the first destination – next you can take your learning abroad and put it into action. There’s no better way to pick up a language than to actually live or spend an extended amount of time in its home country. As well as intensively learning from the best native-speaking teachers, you will be surrounded by the language. Everywhere you go you will need to use it and therefore you will be forced to learn.

The language of the world

Of course learning any language is a great thing to do, but English is the most recognised language of around the world. Britain, the United States and Australia all speak English and it is the official language in 54 countries. International business, airport control, Hollywood and many more of the world’s most powerful industries operate with English. For this reason, it is more valuable than any other language.
Furthering your career and opening new directions

Whatever line of work you’re in, there will be some kind of position where it would benefit from learning another language – especially English. The most common career paths are education, Translation, world business and communications. But if you look closely enough, you can find something in just about any line of work. International computer games tester anyone?
Travel English-speaking countries with ease

It is the dream of many individuals around the world to travel America, Australia and the United Kingdom at some point in their lives. You can certainly do this without much of a grasp of the language, but with it you will be able to see and do so much more than you normally would. Meet and talk to the locals and they will show you all the sights that are not listed in your guide books.
A second, third or fourth language improves your mind

Maybe you can speak English already or you’re a native? If this is the case then you should consider learning another language – the more you know the more broad-minded you will become. If you’re looking for French schools France is without doubt the best place to learn the language. It is the same with learning English in a British city or if studying at a German school Berlin would be your best bet.

A large number of our pupils continue their studies at university.

Compare these three English sentences:

1. What is your blood type?
(Expected answer is a precise named category.)

2. What sort of prices do they charge?
(Expected answer is a description rather than a named category.)

3. What kind of dog is that?
(Probable answer is a named category, but not necessarily as precise as 1 above.
A descriptive answer is also possible.)

So …

‘type‘ usually means a precisely defined category.

‘sort‘ is more general, often about character rather than definition and can be used in a negative way e.g. What sort of person would do a terrible thing like that?

‘kind‘ is about half way between, usually referring to large categories or families of things that are naturally related.

Note that ‘type’ cannot be used as a hedge phrase, as in ‘She’s a bit sort of (or kind of) upset about it.’

I want to share some experiences I had before when trying to deal with this language. The most difficult skill to improve might be Speaking, as many learners don’t have much chance to practice in talking, a few hours a day talking in English can be impossible. I tried many ways before and it really helped:

- I tried to correct my pronunciation first, in order not to repeat any wrong word that might cause us sometimes make mistakes unconsciously when talking. The more correct the pronunciation is, the better the others can understand what we are talking about, that’s the same to us to understand them. It was not easy as my tongue was tired out by keep moving to make the right words with right sounds, my jaw couldn’t even move (well, just a bit complaining). The pronunciation part in the dictionary is helper for us to imitate.

- I tried to listen to as many podcasts as possible as I didn’t have much chance to meet native speakers, so I listen to native speakers when they are not in front of me instead. I listened, and repeated, sometimes played one single podcast many times to let my brain digest how English sounds rightly, then I remember it.

- Other experiences are by music and movies, as it’s really boring with academic things every time and I needed some entertainments. Music created great excitement in learning, and by watching movies with subtitles I can both listen and check if I hear it right.

Here are some preferences I got by the internet.

“How to speak English well”

The best way to absorb the English language is to keep speaking and listening in conversation in English as much as possible. This is a hard step for many people in the beginning, because it is difficult to take the first steps in uncomfortable situations. But, soon after the ice has been broken, it gets easier and before you know it, you are doing it with little conscious effort on your part.

One helpful trick is to get together with classmates, friends, or other acquaintances who are more advanced in their English skills. Meet in social situations, such as spending time in a cafe, or perhaps over dinner. This is a great way to speak and listen in an environment which is relaxed and comfortable. Don’t worry about making mistakes, and just enjoy the conversation. Over time, most students develop fluency naturally through talking during these simple social situations.

Whenever it is possible, turn on the radio and listen to some English music. After a few times, the lyrics will make more sense, and it will become easier to understand English in normal conversation as well. As time progresses, it will become surprisingly apparent that absorbing the language in the background will help a lot when communicating in real world situations.

After grammar is learned, and it becomes more comfortable to talk in English, there will come a time when learning proper pronunciation is just as important as everything else. This also takes time, and a lot of patience and practice, but to truly master English, learning proper pronunciation is very, very important.

When people are speaking to you or when you watch television, watch the mouth of people talking and try to imitate the movements. There is a rhythm to speech you should learn. Repeat and try to imitate the intonation.

During the learning process speaking slowly helps in learning the right rhythm of the language. Whatever language you speak does not have the same rhythm as another language. A dictionary show the correct pronunciation of words, so having a dictionary is essential.

When you practice you find the pronunciation in the dictionary. Listing the words you seem to have trouble with is a great idea. Then when you can speak with a native speaker they can check the list and help you to practice these specific words. This will be an advantage to your progress in learning the language well.

Buying books on tape is a great way to learn. The best way to do this is to listen to the tape and then record your own voice repeating what you have just heard. This is another way of practicing. When you compare the way you speak and the way the person is reading on tape you may be able to pick up some words that you are not saying correctly.

Another excellent way to practice is to read English text out loud. By doing this you use the muscles that one uses when speaking English. It allows you to develop those muscles. Pronouncing all the words carefully and every part of each word, your progress will accelerate. In recording this practice daily you easily isolate words that are difficult for you.

Immediate results are not possible as learning a second language and speaking takes time and effort. If you can find English speaking friends to converse with, you will tend to progress much quicker. You must have the patience to persevere and practice.”

Source: Internet

Why? Because in his speech, Jobs took a somber moment to talk about his impending death and the importance of living life to the fullest.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” Jobs said that day.

“No one wants to die,” he added. ”Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. ”

“Your time is limited,” Jobs added. ”So don’t waste it living someone else’s life. … Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

Watch the video of Steve Jobs, in his own words:

Read the full transcript of Steve Jobs’ commencement address delivered at Stanford University on June 12, 2005 — here:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

PHOTOS: Steve Jobs Through The Years

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

PHOTOS: Apple Products Since the Beginning

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.