How do I improve my spoken english?

Hello, Grammar is important to express your ideas or thoughts in a clear understandable way, but in adition to that we all know how important are the skills of listening and speaking. You need both of them, listening and speaking and they are the key point to be accurate both ways expressing and idea and the idea your partner is trying to express. Although I have been studing english since I was 9 years old (now I'm 34), a few years ago I visited UK and I got so dissapointed because I couldn't understand almost anything that I thought I knew nothing and all the effort had been for nothing. Not to say that the locals had to ask me to repeat again and again what I was saying. Obviously, my spoken English was very bad. When I returned to Spain I thought seriously about this experience and after some research I found out that the native speakers do not pronounce the way I was taught. When we study pronunciation we learn to pronounce isolated words, with no context and context affects to pronunciation. Wow ! That was new to me. In English we stress sylables in a word, example: EXport is an adjective but exPORT is a verb. But we also stress words in a sentence, example: I didn't SAY he bought the Car. This means that maybe I only suggest it, but didn't actually say it. I didn't say HE bought the car. Maybe it was someone else. There are 7 different meanings for this sentence depending on wich word you stress. If you don't know wich word to stress to better express what you actualy want to say you might find yourself in an embarrasing situation. This is also called Intonation. Then native speakers also use liasons, this is the second aspect of spoken English. Sentences .... are .... not ..... pronunced .... like ... separate ..... words. They link each word with the next one using some simple rules, but the result sounds very different from what we, the non-native speakers, may expect. And last but not least, pronunciation. Pronunciation, you have to learn how to produce each and everyone of the sounds used in English. The R semivowel is often a problem for non-native speakers. The vowels sounds, there are 15 vowel sounds in English (in my native tongue there are only 5) so had to learn how to produce those sounds, get used to them and start using them in normal conversation. Once you learn to do those 3 things you'll be perfectly understandable, it'll be harder for someone to get you wrong and finally you will understand native speaker with no effort and accurately. There are some books with cassettes or CD's that teach you this, that would be enough. In fact, it was enough for me. I have been using "American Accent Training", there are other series but I haven't tried them. For instance "Act with an accent" you can find all the standard accents in most english speaking countries like Standard American, British Accent, Scottish accent, etc... Paltalk is a video-voice-text chat room. It is free and you can get an account, then come on-line and look for the category "Learning and Universities" under that category you'll find "Learn foreign languages" and then you'll see some rooms where you'll be able to put into practice what you are learning and you'll meet english native speakers from everywhere. That's what I did and It worked out for me. Hope it helps, if you want to ask any question do so. Good Luck !

start using it in day to day life.. or take some class

Since having a conversation in English could be hard, try reading out loud with books. If there are words you are unsure about, hit the net and you'll find somewhere with the correct pronunciation in a soundfile.