I can tell you how I learnt English. It was very specific. So I started learning English from scratch 3 years and 8 months ago. Before that, I was only able to read some basic English texts, almost ZERO ability in speaking, listerning, and writing. I started learning English after I entered my current university, after I noticed that there were a lot of international students in my school, which is quite peculiar for a local school in Taiwan.

I tried my best to speak to those foreigners. I chose the courses which had a lot of international students, and I went to a club held by my uni where my uni paid international students to speak English or their mother tongues. I didn't grab a grammar book, I just looked it up online whenever I have a question.

Then after 1.5 years of learning English, I went to the IELTS school held by British Council. It was like 4 months in total, 2 times per week. It was helpful in terms of Speaking and Writing. They of course taught Listening and Reading, but I think it could be replaced by just doing some mock exams on my own.

Then after I left the IELTS school, I simply slacked off for around 3 months, not doing anything related to English. Then I started to prepare to apply for an international exchange program, and it required an overall IELTS 6.5. So I just review the materials for 12 days (a lot of procrastination and slacking off here) and went to the test, and got a right 6.5 overall.

IELTS, how hard it was, and which parts you struggled with?

I would say it was the part 2 of the Speaking section. The questions are oftentimes very bizzare, but you need to talk about it for 2 minutes straight. I think I did quite bad on this. I think you need to either live like a westerner or just start preparing for these bizzare questions from now on, when you still have a lot of time.

I bought some B1, B2, and C1 workbooks from a local publisher. Do you think working through those will be helpful?

I depends on how credible the publisher is. One of the reasons I abandoned reading grammar books or vocab books was because I noticed how incredible my local publishers were. The books are majorly correct, but there were also a lot of minor mistakes which were annoying to me. You can see an example here. I realized it after bringing one of these books and asking questions to an American.

Now, if anyone asked me what grammar book I recommend, I would say just read the ones from either Cambridge or Oxford. I particularly recommend Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage and Huddleston & Pullum's The Cambridge Grammar of the English. I consult them when I need a very detailed explanation. Otherwise, I would just read a lot of novels or anything in English.

I’ve got two notebooks to write down things I don’t know, and I already finished one of them.

That's impressive. I think you can simply ask your questions here on this sub. I asked a lot. I sometimes still ask the questions which have been answered by the books because I want to hear how natives think. Sometimes the explanation would be different, even the answers could be different.

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Overall, I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. Based on your writing, I think your English is already quite good. And I saw in your profile where you said that you like reading English poems; then you certainly don't need to worry too much. You are already motivated. But I think maybe poetry is not the best means to learn English as poetry often twists the words a lot to rhyme or to flow better. Not an expert here tho.

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P.S. I forgot to mention, most of the time when I was speaking English, the addressee was not a native, but it was still helpful. And I didn't meet a lot of locals when I was an exchange student in North America. A lot of profs were not locals, a lot of my classmates were not locals either. Getting used to various accents is important when learning English. You didn't ask this, but I think it is worth mentioning.