101 Techniques To Improve Your English And Have Fun In The Process. Technique #1 -- Watch Movies Without Dubbing

Dubbing is evil. It's worse than voting on Republicans[1]. It's only slightly better than trying to exterminate the Jews, so beware, if you value your Dresden. Dubbing makes it impossible to learn anything. It's redundant as mayonnaise in sushi.

If you need some support, use English subtitles. It's particularly helpful with complicated specialized vocabulary, like in some medical dramas. Or when actors are speaking Watsky/Silk-style[2,3]. Or when there's a lot of noise in the background.

The most important part is that this way you're learning naturally, by listening, understanding and remembering, just like a baby is learning its first language. And you're having fun in the process. You're listening to real-life language in real-life scenarios[4]. Ok, its realism may be questioned in many ways, but it's still much better than completely artificial scenes from the textbook.

The hard part is convincing yourself, that you're ready. And I don't mean, before trying. I mean after realizing, that you understood like 80% or less. This is the turning point.

I had my cherry popped several years ago, when I wanted to see Rescue Me[5] very badly, but at that time there was absolutely no translation available online[6]. I said, what the heck[7], I'll try. It wasn't easy, since I choose a series which is made mostly of difficult dialogues -- long, complicated, filled with references to US celebrities, tv shows, sports, and whatever they're calling culture down there. But I managed.

So I'm going to leave you with an old Polish proverb -- the world belongs to the brave.

[1] Or any local equivalent. Every country seems to have one.
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-d-ehF-K8I
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6XLswqiX0s
[4] Movies will teach you proper vocabulary, if you're planning to be a drug dealer, superhero, homicide detective, world-class surgeon or an astronaut. I can't think of more real-life scenarios than that.
[5] That's about my "film cherry". The "book cherry" has been shatered years before, but that's another story.
[6] Now there's even a dubbed version. And several poorly translated subs.
[7] Yeah. I remember precisely that it was "heck", nothing else.