Hi, jumz2003, and welcome to this madhouse! 
Sorry your thread got derailed. I cannot speak for others, but from personal experience I have found that reading books or whatever I could get my hands on helps IF I took the time to stop reading when I run into an unfamiliar word, write it down, look it up in a dictionary and write down the pronunciation and meaning, the works. It takes a lot of patience to do that, but in the end the results are worth it. The rest just fall into place. That is just my two cents.
