Spoken English is so different from the English people learn in schools and textbooks. Students around the world spend billions of dollars and countless hours studying English yet very few can speak well. They wrongly focus on increasing their vocabulary size instead of learning phrasal verbs and slang.
An example of this type of sentence is, "I think he made up that story". "Made up" is the phrasal verb here. Made up means something like, "tell a lie".
Another example is, "I ran into my friend yesterday at the mall". "Ran into" is what we are talking about here.
Ran into means something like, "meet unexpectedly".
These sentences are so common in spoken English yet few non native speakers are able to master them.
They probably understand the words on their own but do not understand the slang usage when the words are used together.
It does not matter how big someone's vocabulary is. If they do not use and understand this stuff well, they will never sound anything like a native speaker.
Some people know this but they use the wrong methods like looking for a phrasal verb dictionary or a list. These are terribly ineffective learning methods.
The best way to learn is to study modern native English speech. I have been teaching exactly how to do this and helping students around the world for years. It doesn't matter what country you are from or what your English level currently is. Learning this material is critical.
Learning American Slang from American TV and movies are also a huge help to get the most relevant material.
