Presentation is more toward public speaking while conservation with friends won't help much. Other factors that plague presentation may include stage/crowd fright, nervous and "gagap" (don't know what's called in English, sorry!).

Conserve with the right person is important. If you conserve with your friends in English but your friends are having the same level of proficiency as you, no point of hoping that it'll improve your English conservation nor the grammar.

For grammar, it's advisable to improve by reading or practising using exercises. Once the fundamental is strong, you can start to focus on fluency and syntax in conversation.

Read, comprehend, write, listen, converse ... should be more precise.

Get a good dictionary will be another effective steps too but make you will use not just as a decoration in the book shelf.

Try not to overload yourself with boombastic vocabulary first. Start with simple and straight-to-the-point sentences; the purpose of the conversation is to let your listeners understand what you want to deliver by constructing a grammatically correct statement. After that, if you intend to move to a higher level, you can start to incorporate better words and use more flowerish and powerful words/phrases.

This post has been edited by David83: Jan 13 2007, 12:53 AM

Reading fiction books might not be a good idea if you use English more in formal occasions/approaches. The language or approach used are flowery and only suitable for literature. For beginners, it might not easy to digest what the whole sentence means due the choice of words (might be using pottery or literature style). Reading is good but must choose good materials to suit your level and purpose.

You need to balance up all the basic skills; read, write, listen and speak. If you're too concentrated on one, the rest will be lagging behind.

1. Read good materials.
2. Write essays/sentences with practice exercises.
3. Listen to news/series
4. Speak/Converse with friends in daily life.

This post has been edited by David83: Jan 13 2007, 10:49 AM

That's the beauty of English words ... noun and verb might not be spelled the same way.

Be careful with American English and British English too ...