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1. Move to the country where your target language is spoken.

2. Find a live-in girlfriend or boyfriend who doesn't speak your language and is not motivated to learn it.

3. Carry a dictionary in your pocket, which you will have to reference constantly to speak with the aforementioned gf/bf.

4. Spend all of your time with people who don't speak your language.

5. Study a lot. Use a succinct grammar book like those published by Routeledge, use a Pimsleur course to get the language feel, and hammer away at vocabulary.

I lived in China, Ukraine and the Philippines and studied their respective languages without the benefit of a monolingual live-in girlfriend. I still learned these languages with varying levels of proficiency, but it was slow going. Then I moved to Brazil and followed the steps above. The difference is remarkable. I was completely conversational and literate in Portugese in about four months.




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