I have been in England for 3 year now. Seems that the progress of my English have gone through some stages:

When I first arrived, I have try to gain the confidence of speaking to local people. It must have been beginner's luck. It went alright. I even got Exellent on all criteria after i had finished my first Language School.

Then came a long time of gradually accumulating, during which time I was talking to a lot of people, shop assisstants, bosses, subordinates, mobile phone company staff, landlords or landladies, host mother and her husband and children(very rarely) until before I went the university which I am still studying in I realized that my English was good enough to deal with general everyday life.

After I started to study at the Uni, I began to find myself lost in understanding what was coming out of lecturer's mouths. I was forced to start another journey. I was collecting the words in Computing field. Six months elapsed after I started to get the hang of jargons and particular words in my field