I lived in The Netherlands until 6 years ago.
The first English I learned was by watching Saturday and Sunday morning cartoons on the BBC. (Inspector Gadget was my favorite) Hardly anything gets dubbed in the Netherlands, most tv programs and movies are in English with subtitles. Some are in German and French but far less then from the UK and USA.

First English in school is at age 10 then all the way through high school (together with German and French) At university all text books are in English so you better know it well by then.
I learned a lot of English from reading Sci-fi too. The non translated section in the library was far bigger and more interesting then the few translated books. I did read some German and French books too at the time but those languages have faded pretty badly from my memory.

You expect dumb Americans to know that much about their own language? Good luck!

That's basically what I was saying...

Playing RPG's hehe, watching movies, tv-series, reading on forums, etc, in my opinion is the best way to learn, classes are ok (I've taken some) but almost everything that I know is not thanks to classes.

Hey! I'm not the one who stereotypes us!

(Back on track.) Do you get what it means now?

Good job that this site has members from England aswell then. :D

Ummm... what?

I had a decent vocabulary when I was still living in Brazil, most of it was learned from music and video games. Then I came to America, started going to high school and in a matter of months I was already able to speak english fairly well.

RPG's and fantasy books from an early age, having a good friend with an American mom also helped! Other than that; movies, TV, video games and magazines.
Generally being interested in languages and learning, involving myself in translation work, web forums with English as the main language, extensive written work in English.

Videogames. I never wanted to learn english it just happened, it's a little weird but i've always been a fan of rpg and following the history (of the game..) was not a problem, it was impossible so i just tended to make my own histories based on the few words that i understood and all the elements that the game did offer, and without me knowing, just the wish or the will of understand what that silver haired guy was saying forced me to learn, it continued evolving until 4 years ago... i was playing .hack gu and i just stoped, it took me a second to get it but i knew every word, i could keep up with every dialogue and i was shocked. Then it just has continued evolving until today, i still get confused specially with the tenses but here i am typing this comment ;) . btw i have an excellent pronunciation (american english).

I came to Australia when I was 9 so I had to learn English. So now I can speak 2 languages, Serbian and English. Studied German for a year but never took it seriously sad to say. I have been very interested in learning Spanish and I hope to take it up soon if I can find the spare time.