Learning and improving language skills is all about hypotheses formation and testing. This can only be done through regular interaction with another (ideally more competent) speaker. You listen (form hyphotheses), respond (test them out) and receive feedback (revise your hyphothesis if need be). Language was originally formed as a way of communicating between two or more people and as such it is best learned when it's used in such a context. There was a linguistic experiment in the 80s when a person tried to learn German only from books (including grammar books). For over 10 years almost every day, he would sit alone and study grammar rules and texts. Eventually, as far as I remember, his reading comprehension was quite good but he had never become a competent speaker. You cannot do without interaction with other speakers if you want to see any progress. Unfortunately (for introverts:)), the more you speak to people and form/revise linguistic habits, the quicker and better you get. There's no way around it. It is like you are unlikely to become a good programmer if you only read manuals without actually writing programs.
I understand it might be hard for an introvert to do it but that's the only way. Something that I have been repeating to myself recently (in a slightly different context) is: progress begins the moment you leave your comfort zone! I think that applies to most areas of life.

Much thankful for all the constructive and encouraging replies.

I discussed this matter with some of the colleagues here. They said
that watching English movies will help. I have watched Gladiator
around 20 times but I didn't find any improvement in my English
and one reason for the same can be that at that time improving
English wasn't my aim so I wasn't focusing on the English. I was too
engrossed in the movie.

Would you please suggest me movies and songs of the accent similar
as Gladiator?
Taste will come later on. Currently I just want something to start off.
Probably movies with less action and more dialogues will help.
What do you say?

This is what I am about to start. I didn't mention before but
unfortunately I have two habits:
- Talking loudly to myself. (No, this is not a positive sign)
- Stammering. (I stammer when I have to speak a foreign language
or when I am conscious that I am being watched or when I wish to
stressfully say something.)

So, now when I talk to myself, I'll keep a dairy with me.
As soon as I get stuck in the middle of a sentence, I'll jot down
that sentence as it is and continue talking.
Later on I'll look up the phrases which I could have used in that
sentence in a better way and repeat that sentence repeatedly.

You might like Merchant Ivory Productions. Out of the few I have seen, Howard's End was my favorite.

THIS is hilariously funny!

I've actually not seen that movie, and to wit, you did state that it was not your original intent to pick up English from that movie, but just laughing that some movie about ... Ancient Rome? or some other period would be considered any template for English speaking.

Yeah, probably a lot of American based movies, and sure one's heavy on dialog. Nothing wrong with things like Sci-Fi, just you need to understand that many terms are likely made up.

I'm also approaching this from a totally different perspective.

.... you write EXCELLENT English. That is not a translator program either. I don't believe you could achieve the prowess you show in your posts by using a translator program. I was sort of half amazed to see someone very close to the 5k club/Guru and also with the high level of rep points on this forum echo a sentiment that they don't feel they're very good with the English language. It would seem that you're able to convey your thoughts well and also while talking about technical terms. That alone would make me wonder if it's not command of terms, but rather just accent is your concern.

So, I took the advice and jumped on the bandwagon.
At that time most of my peers in office used to speak

in English and I used to reply in Hindi .That itself was embarrassing.


So, I started listening to free audio books from Librivox.com.
That helped a lot. I decided to talk to each and every person in
English. I formally announced that decision so that people didn't
consider me crazy.


Initially it was very difficult but I kept on speaking in
English only, constantly correcting myself, constantly
listening to podcasts, and constantly reading books
aloud to make myself hear English.


All this has paid off. I can speak fluent English now

without any effort. The child is 7 years old and English
is her first language. Even while crying and pretend
play she speaks only English.
Thanks to my efforts and thanks to all the encouraging
words posted here in this thread.


BTW speaking fluent English has also given a boost to
my confidence since here English is preferred over the
native language Hindi.

Congratulations and well done!
One thing about listening to audiobooks or reading books (to learn a language) - ideally, they should be contemporary ones. Listening to, for example, some novel by Charles Dickens, as great as it can be, will expose you to the language that is no longer used (both in terms of vocabulary and phrases), which might make you pick up some weird habits:)

To learn everyday language, contemporary tv-shows would probably be best as they reflect how the language is being used now.

If you'd like to improve your English in a particular subject (eg. technology or sports), then relevant podcasts would probably be best...

But then again, you've already done it! Well done.

Martin, I realized this a long time back. These classic
books are free to read and listen but they contain
sentence constructions which are difficult to understand,
and several words which no one in India would have even
heard. So learning those things won't be helpful in any
case.

I turned to TED talks podcasts and BBC English
learning drama. That helped a lot. And most of all reading
normal books aloud. I read somewhere that brain (not brianL)
learns a spoken language when it hears it.
Enid Blyton helped too though it is for children and
not very exciting.

My mother learned English late in life. Her original language was German. Her English was excellent but she never learned the difference between spoken and literary English. I often used to say to her, "You don't say that, Mum. That's book language."

same here, i dont speak much English but i read and write all the time.
i have had friends from States and Portugal and with those guys i spoke english, they understood what i were speaking.

All languages contain fossils of their past pronunciation in their spelling, but most languages have periodic spelling reforms to get rid of those. French, for instance got rid of a lot of silent s's and replaced them with a circumflex accent over the preceding vowel. German and Russian had spelling reforms too. English never did. The English were just too stubborn to change their spellings.

oh, but there have been spelling reforms in English throughout the centuries. For example, Old English contained the following characters: œ, æ, ȝ, ƿ, þ, ð. Then in the Middle English the characters bacame more or less standardised to resemble today's English alphabet. Nevertheless, there were a great number of variations you could spell one word. Subsequently, in the Early Modern English there were (for better or worse) many (un)successful attempts to standardise the spelling and to map it to corresponding sounds. The most interesting changes (at least to me) were related to its syntax, though. Syntactically, speaking Old English was more similar to today's German where inflectional endings convey many meanings. Over time, English has lost all those inflectional endings to rely on word order.

My father was a native German speaker, but I remember him telling me that once he had learned to speak English, he could no longer read German. It was just too long-winded and roundabout. It took a paragraph, he said, to say what you could say in English in a sentence.

An old thread now revived.

IMO, the OP is anxious about imparting english language skills to her child and so overthinks the issue. Eg: The five versions to tell a child not to spit on the floor. (Post #36 dt : 31 Jan 2015).

Ultimately, it's about communicating what one should be communicating.

AP