Randomly noticed this thread at the top of the forum. For me, as a Brit ex pat, learning the first language was the hardest, but it all tumbled down once you start to learn a little and see languages are similar to each other, and the underlying structure becomes apparent.
What worked for me:
1. Listen to as much native radio as you can. It's easier if you live there, but try downloading podcasts, news reports, anything. You need to hear it being spoken as well as read it. I quite enjoy cycling and running, so podcasts were a huge help for me.
2. Try to borrow, or find, childrens books. They often have pictures to associate with the words, and believe it or not, are huge catalysts to get your lexicon as broad as possible at the start of the learning process.
3. Label everything in your house with its word in the language you are studying
4. Try to talk to friends often in that language. Try to articulate what you are doing in the language as you do it. "I am going to make breakfast, which will be x and y". It sounds stupid, but you are teaching your brain patterns, and the firmer those patterns are, the better you are going to be at fluent speaking.
The overall feeling, is that it needs to put in major effort to do it at this speed, and obviously I wanted to accelerate my learning. With the above, I was able to converse openly after six months and fluent after a year and a bit.
P.S. Try using Anki or BykiLearning as a way to create flip cards (you can do this yourself with paper ones). For example, you may have 'pillow' on one side, and "Kissen" on the other. You want to associate Kissen with a visual representationship of a pillow in your mind, not the associated English word. Every time you flip the card, you repeat it a furtner 10 times - the programs do this automatically - but the intention is to help build up your lexicon extremely quickly, as you effectively 'brainwash' yourself.
