Here are my guidelines, from what I have gathered in the couple of months of attempting to learn Korean, for learning a foreign language.
1) Study a comprehensive grammar book. If the grammar book doesn't cover all the most common areas (Korean Grammar in Use is the main grammar book I use but it doesn't cover banmal), then find a grammar book that does cover those areas and supplement study of the main book with study of this book.
2) Have some easy reading material. Have some readers that have English translations.
3) Find vocabulary drill books. The children's ones are the best. They cover the most commonly used basic words you need and have fun exercises so you can practise writing the new vocabulary and recalling their meaning.
4) Find teachers who will talk to you in Korean for a solid hour. Pay them. This is important! Do not rely on LANGUAGE EXCHANGE. When you pay the teacher, you are in control of the situation. They will not use English if you instruct them not to. This is important for language immersion.
5) Find online games if you can that involve using the target language. Ask your teacher to assist you in finding these games and helping you to play them.
6) Have a program of fun activities to do: charades (involving drawing pictures on a white board), cooking lessons, skills teaching lessons, card games and any other sort of FUN activity.
7) Watch videos in the target language and watch WITH and WITHOUT subtitles.
8) Volunteer or join a social group, club or learn some activity outside your home (yoga, dancing, inline skating .....)
9) Do not stress out! Do not be anxious about finding an immersion environment. If you cannot find a natural immersion environment, PAY someone to talk to you for an hour once or twice a week. If you hire a few people, you may have conversation lessons for seven hours a week. Aim for 5 - 7 hours a week. It will be cheap to find someone if you live in the nation whose language you are trying to learn. There will be many native speakers who want to teach you the target language. Give them 15 minutes of free English speaking at the end of the 45 minutes or the one hour. That way they will be happy to speak to you in the target language for a solid block of time.
10) Remember all the skills are important. But learning grammar the easy and natural way is by listening to native speakers and picking up the grammar that way.
11) Make it fun and convenient for you. It is worth paying a little extra money for tuition. Do not stint on hiring people. You save money because they come to YOU at your own convenience. You do not need to spend lots of money and time moving to a remote area where no one speaks English. And by not paying tuition in language institutes, you can actually save money this way. Hiring one on one tutors can actually be cheaper and more cost-effective than paying for a course. One one on one lesson is the equivalent of six hours at a language institution.
12) Be hopeful and confident. Watch a lot of TV in the target language. Watch many videos and dvds in the target language. Do not despair. And do not compare yourself to other people. Do not let others discourage you. Do not let others' opinions of your language ability make you feel down. You learned your native language so you can learn another language.
13) As an adult you have resources that can make language acquisition faster. It takes a child five years to become fluent talkers in their native language. You can accelerate this process because you are learning consciously. Instead of five years, you can learn in one year.
14) Remember that learning a language mainly by reading grammar books is about learning ABOUT the language and not actually learning to communicate in that language.
15) Communication is the key. So long as you understand what people are saying and others understand what you are trying to say, you are making progress.
16) Review grammar books regularly.
17) Try and concentrate on vocabulary and grammar separately when reading material. Read for the vocabulary first and then read for the grammar. Read the material several times if necessary.
18) Read material that is at your level or just a little higher than your level.
19) Once you have the basics of a language down - speaking, writing, reading and listening, then concentrate on developing proficiency in all of those areas especially writing. But you should try and get the basics down first.
20) Practise with any people around you that you can. For example, practise with shopkeepers and taxi-drivers.
21) The best language teachers are the ones who will attempt to speak to you 100% in the target language. Ask teachers to speak slowly, not get you to talk in Korean at first, talk in easy to understand sentences. Ask them not to "teach" you Korean when talking to you, but talk in Korean about topics you are mutually interested in. The best language teachers are the ones who will not only talk in the target language as much as they can but will also do anything they can to communicate with you - that means playing games with you, acting out scenes, drawing pictures, moving their bodies, making gestures and so on.
22) Initially use the method that suits your personality the best but be careful not to just stick to that method. Move onto using other methods when you feel more confident about your language ability.
23) Remember that true fluency includes fluency in speaking, reading and writing.
