By far the most important factor is the level of time you are immersed from the language. The longer you spend with the language, the faster you'll learn. Therefore listening, reading, writing, speaking, and studying words and phrases. This doesn't mean sitting in class searching the window, nor taking note of other students who usually do not speak well, nor getting explanations in your special language about how a language works. This implies spending time enjoyably connected into the language you're learning.
2) Listen and browse every day!
Listen wherever you happen to be on your MP3 player. Read what you happen to be listening to. Hear and browse things that you want, things that you can mostly understand, or maybe partly understand. If you keep listening and reading you will get useful to the language. One hour of listening or reading is simpler than many hours of sophistication time.
3) Focus on words and phrases!
Build up your vocabulary, you'll need lots. Start to note words and the way they come together as phrases. Learn these words and phrases through your listening and reading. Read online, using online dictionaries, and make your own personal vocabulary lists for review. Soon you'll run into your new words and phrases elsewhere. Gradually you can be able make use of them. do not worry about how accurately you speak until you could have accumulated a a good amount of words through listening and reading.
4) Take responsibility for your own personal learning!
If you you should not want to understand the language, you won't. If you do want to learn the language, take control. Choose content of interest, that you really want to listen to and read. Hunt down the words and phrases that you need to understand your listening and reading. do not wait for someone else to demonstrate the language, nor to inform you what to do. Discover the language by yourself, like kids growing up. Talk whenever you feel like it. Write when you feel like it. An instructor cannot teach you to be fluent, but it is possible to learn to be fluent if you would like to.
5) Relax and enjoy yourself!
do not worry about what you cannot remember, or cannot yet understand, or cannot yet say. It doesn't matter. you are learning and improving. The language will gradually become clearer in your brain, but this will happen on a schedule that you cannot control. So sit back and enjoy. Just make sure you spend enough time when using the language. That may be the best guarantee of success.
Steve Kaufmann is a former Canadian diplomat, who has had his own company within the international trade of forest products for over 20 years. Steve founded The Linguist Institute Ltd. in 2002 to develop a new approach to language learning using the web. The revolutionary LingQ system for learning multiple languages is currently accessible in Beta. Steve speaks nine languages fluently and is currently learning Russian using LingQ. Steve maintains a blog on language learning.