The first few months still remain one of the steepest learning curves of my life so far. Applied Neurosurgery seemed more straightforward than the way English teaches its students very specific rules of grammar, only for said rules to be broken in almost every actual conversation in which I engaged. English language schools seemed to stand for absolutely nothing as I was bamboozled by a series of "ain't"s, "innit"s and "naa-worri-mean-mate"s from the locals; which I only later realized meant "isn't", "isn't it" and "do you know what I mean, friend". After spending so much time on perfecting my structure, I realized the only real way to sound English around English people was to forget everything I'd learnt and start breaking all the rules.

During this time, I seemed to be doing better in the real world, but the teachers from my English courses London had supplied began to despair when they received homework back from me filled with colloquialisms and purposefully mis-spelled words.

Nowadays I seem to have found a happy medium - my written English is of a fairly high level, even though I still occasionally have grammatical problems; and my spoken English is good enough to be understood, but idiomatic enough to sound natural. Practicing in the 'real world' has helped me no end, though I believe it was the combination of constant practice and my patronage of several language schools London had to offer.