Everybody is different and we all have different needs, different goals and different reasons for learning English. If you are an experienced language learner and a polyglot, it can be easier for you to know what to do, how to do it, how much to do it and how often to do it to make progress to the next level. Even polyglots say that they like learning with a teacher/language coach. Lýdia Machová (a famous polyglot) advocates independent study but she also used a teacher for learning Swahili.
Language teachers have been trained to get the most out of every text, recording, conversation or even picture to help you make the quickest progress. You are still the ones setting your goals, they just show you how to get there and guide you through activities that will get you there. Your goal may be to become fluent, reach C2 level or just to get from your level to the next level. Or maybe you just want to be comfortable talking as a tourist in which case your goal may be much easier to achieve.
Generally, the guidelines for how many focused hours of study you need to move to the next level are around 200 hours. This is active learning time not just watching a movie. These are exercises designed to improve either your vocabulary or grammar or speaking or writing or reading or listening – usually one or two are the main focus of each exercise.
What is your English goal? How are you getting there?
Remember, if you just use English passively by watching content and listening/reading, chances are you will stay at your level (this is still great, it means you will not lose the skills you already have) but you may not progress to the next level. And of course, if you just read and listen but don’t speak, you will lose the speaking level that you have now because only speaking keeps your speaking skills strong. You need to work on ALL your skills and do something every day or a minimum of 2-3 times a week to achieve results. You can do it by yourself if you know how, you can work with a teacher or you can ask your teacher to train you to do it independently but then just remember you have to be VERY disciplined, do it regularly and track your progress by yourself.
