As I read English, I realize again and again how much understandability in reading depends on context. That is, predictability of what will be told matters pretty much for text to be read smoothly.

And something a bit similar to this applies to listening. The more patterns of English phrases which appear frequently are accumulated and memorized in your mind, the easier you can distinguish what a speaker says, because you can guess what they are going to say. If a speaker speaks rather quickly, you can guess, rather than catch, the sound to be there thanks to the memory of patterns.

These imply that the only way to be good at English would be: "Study more, practice more, use it more, more and more."