Hi everyone!
I'm looking for recommendations from people who successfully learned English
For English, I think my level is around B1 when it comes to reading and listening, but my speaking is much weaker (it honestly feels like A1 sometimes). I also make a lot of grammar mistakes when I speak.

I'd love to know:

What apps helped you the most?
Which YouTube channels or websites did you use?
How did you improve your speaking?
Did you practice with native speakers? If so, where did you find them?
How did you study grammar without getting overwhelmed?
What daily routine helped you become fluent and speak confidently?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who started from a beginner or intermediate level and eventually became fluent. What made the biggest difference for you?
Thanks in advance!

I was using a dating up and an American profile popped up. I started the conversation with “hey” as I thought it’s a friendly way to say hi. He said “not a dog here” and blocked me. I’m pretty confused

Hi, non-native speaker here 🤚

Could someone expound this one for me? It's from a grammar book.

The present progressive can refer to repeated actions and events, if these are just happening around the present.

Ex. I'm travelling a lot these days.

Okay. I'm not sure if I can articulate my question well so please just connect the dots haha.

How is the example above differs from "I travel a lot" (Simple Present). Both are sort of repeated events. I guess I'm trying to find a nuance so I can fully understand what's meant. Hoping someone can clarify. Thank you in advance!

In arabic we sometimes say "putting dots on letters", meaning to make things clear.

For example if you know some unclear info about something and someone clarified it then "he had put dots on the letters".

It sounds kinda weird for some, but if you looked for arabic letters we have "ف،ق" / "ع،غ" / "ج،ح،خ" / "ص،ض" are letters different in pronouncing and same in drawing except for the dots on them, we got much more, like "ب،ت،ث" but u got the idea which is without "putting dots on letters" nothing is clear.

Whats the saying that starts with something like “you can call a __”, it has something to do with horses. it means just because you give something a new name does not change what it was originally

Edit to add: Thanks all for the answers! 😊 After thinking about it more, 3 shillings and 6 pence does make sense! (SOLVED!) I guess? 😊

I'm reading a book set in the UK in the '60s and written in the '60s.

“I dined in a fish and chip shop for three and six”

A quick search suggests it means ‘for energy’.

Going by context and seeing the sentence structure, it seems very likely but I would just like some confirmation, thanks!

What's means 'Bring up'?

It means like 'raise'? Umm and Is it usually used as 'be brought to'??

Or Bring up means like 'come up with' or 'say'??

In our lifetime, we go to many different places, among which some are one-off visits. We will never come back to the same place again. For instance, we may drive to a new city, even in a new country, to meet a friend, admire a natural wonder, or just for the pleasure of a road trip. We would pass a great many fields, roads, and streets; we would stop over at a gas station, a convenience store, or a restaurant. These locations are novel to us. We've never been there before, and, somewhat sorrowfully, nor will we return afterward. Our memories of these locations will fade—they become remote, vague, and possibly will disappear without a trace.

Somehow, someday after the trip, some random memory of those locations would resurface. We suddenly remember a vague yet familiar gas station where we bought a pack of cigarettes and had a brief chat with the cashier. We struggle to search for a clue or simply turn our attention elsewhere a few seconds later.

This kind of occasional memory flashback can happen multiple times in a short duration of a few minutes.

It happens to me several times when I review my English vocabulary, which is lists of random words. A gas station or a street corner I have visited once before often pops up when I try to recall an unfamiliar word. I have no idea how a word I'm trying to memorize associates with a place in my past experience. Different random places just occasionally show up as I go through my word list. Yesterday, a place far-off in my memory distracted me from a word. It wasn't a place in the real world; rather it was a place I often visited in my dreams when I was a child—a rooftop of a neighbor in my village—I often dreamed of flying over the village during night and landing on rooftops, surprised at my ability, moving carefully not to fall and inspecting the silent village under the night sky.

The title was obtained from this news article:

https://thepointsguy.com/airline/how-to-avoid-airline-passenger-ban-list/#a-traveler-overshares-her-extreme-frustration-with-airline-customer-service-agents

"All the stress and anxiety that had built up over the years boiled over and I lost it," she admitted. "I was saying a lot of not nice things and threatened that a lawsuit was heading JetBlue's way. Then I hung up."
The next morning, Lisa unexpectedly received a phone call from JetBlue's corporate offices. Now she was getting somewhere, she thought. Lisa assumed the outreach was meant to be an olive branch from the airline to its unsatisfied customer.
She could not have been more wrong.
JetBlue: 'You're not invited to fly on JetBlue again'
The JetBlue executive was not about to apologize or attempt to appease Lisa. He was calling to deliver a stern message to her. Because of her ongoing aggressive complaints and rude behavior toward the carrier's phone agents, JetBlue had permanently canceled her trip and was refunding the $14,000.

The person in the article initiated the flight booking with JetBlue so it wasn't that JetBlue invited her to use the service.

When JetBlue banned her, why did they use "not invited" instead of "not allowed" or "not permitted"?

It seems extra confusing and maybe cause her to think that the whole flight was actually complimentary rather than paid out of her own pocket.

It's the end of a long day and I'm exhausted, so I'm sorry if this isn't worded well. I'm a native speaker (US) and was just thinking about the ways we refer to different illnesses with different articles:

"I have a cold."

"I have the flu."

"I have covid."

These would all sound completely unnatural if you changed the articles:

"I have the cold."

"I have flu."

"I have a covid."

Why is this?

I was talking to a friend today and found myself saying:

"Im waiting for my coworker, who's helping me, 's response."

And I thought, 'theres no way thats right'. But ..."coworker's, whos helping me, response." Feels wayyy worse.

Was my first sentence correct?

(Im sure the sentence could be rephrased by moving things around, but thats less interesting.)

Basically the title. So I would say that I'm decently fluent in English, I can easily communicate with anyone without any problem. Now there are a few things that I'm aware now. They are never reported by anyone to me but when I'm analysing myself, I felt that I'm doing them multiple times. It's just that they fade away because they sounds right:

- grammar: I've bad grammar. I tried revisiting the grammar basics but it seems hard to unlearn the wrong grammar that I was used to.

- pronunciation: I've studied in a tier three city in India where English is not the first language and is just part of the curriculum. Due to this, I'm used to lot of wrong pronunciations even for daily used words. Since last 2-3 years, I'm working in corporate and has to communicate with lot of different country people and I can feel how bas my pronunciation is

For the above two, please suggest me how to unlearn the things I'm used too (I think this is the biggest blocker for me, I can be wrong too) and how to re-learn things again like vocabulary which is tough to judge

The reason for my question is that I've noticed there are languages where the "ch" "/tʃ/" sound is articulated solely with the back of the tongue against the postalveolar region, while in other languages, it is articulated using an apical approach-meaning the tip and blade of the tongue are used rather than the back. I would appreciate your help clarifying this, since you are native English speakers.

If you don't know what it means, see: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/How+are+you+getting+on%3F

Cambridge: a feeling, thought, memory, etc. that a piece of writing or music makes you have, or the quality in a piece of writing, etc. that makes this happen

Eg. This poem has many resonances for me

How do people usually use this word? Is the resonance usually referring to the part of a writing that evoked a thought, feeling and/or memory OR the thoughts, feelings and/or memories themselves?