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Several things. The more the better; in combination is best: Physically move to the place. Befriend locals who don't use English. Shun people who do use English. Take classes. Get a job where your coworkers do not use English in the workplace. Use Quizlet or flashcards or some similar tool.
For Android phones, you can sync Anki with Ankidroid [2].
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki...
Rinse lather repeat. It took about 2 years before I was confident enough in my German skills to consider myself conversationally fluent at a beginner level. I spent four years of devoted study (yes high school) to get the concepts down, and now I've basically tried to maintain it in the 8 years since. For me it was important to focus on syntax and semantics more than vocabulary. It's super easy to find a translation…
Keep track of words you don't kn ow during the day, and look them up in the dictionary every evening. Go out of your way to meet native speakers. When I worked in Silicon Valley, I listened to Spanish language radio stations only, watched only SPanish language TV networks, only read Spanish language newspapers which happened to be free, and only spoke Spanish in stores and restaurants. It helped that 50% of population in SV is hispanic, and I was a foreigner in the USA just like them.
Another trick, after you check the news in English, read it again on the net in your target language. And watch TV series with subtitles in the same language. For instance, I watched Russian TV series with subtitles in Russian. That helped me when my ear could not make out the words. Also, not movies, but TV series because the same characters appear again and again so you get used to their quirks of speech and can learn faster.
Buy a kids encyclopedia in the target language. Don't be afraid to download and read university papers and dissertations in linguistics about your target language.
And finally, get married to someone who speaks the language and raise bilingual kids.
I am assuming you are talking about spoken languages. Necessity and/or Motivation is usually the force behind it
I've got another example where I had motivation but not necessity. A few years later I became interested in manga / anime, back when translations of either were scarce. So I signed up for Japanese classes, and eventually even went to Japan as an exchange student for a summer. I continued to take lessons in college, until I'd essentially run out of classes to take. Having done all that, I would say my Japanese proficiency was merely functional. I probably could have passed JLPT N1 had I tried, but I didn't bother since I wasn't planning on working or studying in Japan. In this case, IMO I was reasonably motivated, but since the necessity component was missing, I never made it over the hump and became fluent.
Finally, the kpop craze got me somewhat interested in learning Korean, but I barely know how to say hello / goodbye. I'll blame that on my brain plasticity though. :-P
I'm fluent in German, English. I'm living in Japan and am almost fluent in Japanese and quarter fluent in Korean. I also recently started Hungarian and Spanish. The most important part in my opinion is to live in a country that speaks the language you want to learn. You have to immerse yourself as much as possible with the culture and language. Also very important that you aren't afraid to try to use what you learned…
Another tip is to pull vocabulary lists from reading material, and then to review them you just re-read that text until it becomes easy.
I've known expats who go to Thailand, live in western communities, associate with other westerners mostly speaking English and deal with locals mostly on a limited level don't get very far. I've also met foreigners who come to live among locals in local neighborhoods and interact with the locals on a daily basis get very good at the language.
I don't think there's any way around it.
I lived in the US for 20 years — came here when I was 10. I'm still not completely fluent in English. A lot of the learning came from interacting with others who mainly spoke in English, but in some occasions I still have to make an effort in order to get pronunciation and grammar correct. In retrospect, what helped me the most in the early days were reading children's books and copying them down on separate piece of…
(By the way: "vocabulary" is not countable!)