How did you really learn a foreign language?
jgrahamc: I learnt French as follows: I did French at school until I was 16 when I did French O-level.  I wasn't very good, but I wasn't very bad.I then forgot about French until I was in my early 20s.  I met my wife.  She's French.  I figured I'd better make an effort to speak French.Having someone to talk to meant I could make all sorts of errors and get corrected.  But she was the wrong person to tell me about French grammar.  I tried taking classes in a local college but they were awful.  Eventually I paid a Swiss woman to teach me French grammar.  Very quickly I realized that the rules of French drilled into me at school were lurking in my head and that all that rote learning was very, very useful.  I took lessons for about 6 months for two hours once a week.Now I speak French fluently.