What does it take to learn English successfully? (part 4)

4) "English to me is a means to achieve my goals rather than the goal itself." Now, you may think we are getting philosophical, and that may be true. One of the reasons why so many English learners fail is that they do rote activities such as grammar exercises or reading dialogues in order to learn English. This is the wrong approach. Winners use English as a means to achieve further goals. Here is an example: average students perfunctorily complete vocabulary exercises in a text book because they think they can learn a lot of English words that way. Winners switch the menu language of their mobile phones to English and thus they pick up English vocabulary all day and automatically. Using the phone is the goal, and learning English is just a positive side-effect.