Dear friend,
I've just read your mail. Your questions is very interesting.
Learning english as a second language can be a hard subject, but depend
on your previous environment. Depend on your mother tonge. I mean,
languages have a core structure, a root, an origin, as you can see...
For instance, if you came from a pretty different language (for
example, your mother tonge is "Mandarin" or "Korean", it's possible you
have more troubles because internal structures in your language are
very different from English).
Another example, people who are from The Netherlands can learn in a
easy way Deutch because the root is similar. Spaniars can learn easier
Italian than Chinese... I hope this point is clear.
Furthermore, depend your strategies to learn english. Traditionally,
a lot of people want to improve his/her idiomatic skills learning a lot
of grammar structures. It's a pity that a lot of people lose a lot of
time because you can learn grammar during, for example, 5 years and
don't know anything (or have a lot of problems) when you want to
communicate in another language.
Finally, American english is very different to another english accents.
Bye for now,
Juan Antonio.
SPAIN