In honor of yet again seeing on reddit "how do I learn a language?"
I made a longer post on it. But the absolute shortest advice I have is: pick a study material and study plan and STICK TO IT. Ideally pick a study material/materials that teach you some new stuff regularly, and progress through them. Once in a while, review what you've studied either with that material or practicing what you learned by immersing (reading/watching/listening to something or chatting with someone in the language). Ideally pick a study material/materials which teach you the skills you wish to learn - reading, listening, speaking, writing. You may need to be creative to make up ways to use your study material/materials to study those 4 skills (or whichever ones you want to focus on). If you take a traditional class, generally the teacher will give you exercises to practice and study each of the 4 skills. If you need to, look up how other people use textbooks to study the 4 skills and copy what they do.
A mistake many people make is just... not finishing the study material they pick. Yeah, if you only ever study 100 words... 4 chapters of a beginner book... you'll remain a beginner. You must move forward. Study some new stuff regularly. Expand what you know over time.
Stick to your chosen study materials until you finish them, then pick a new study material that TEACHES YOU NEW STUFF. So if you just finished Assimil, don't start a Teach Yourself book as they teach the same stuff! Move onto an intermediate learning material after you finish a beginner material!
Do not repeatedly study various beginner materials for years. This is a mistake many people make, myself included. You need to keep picking study materials which teach you NEW stuff.
Good options for someone who struggles to pick study materials or get past the beginner stage: formal classes!!!! Take beginner 1 and 2, intermediate 1 and 2! There's free and cheap courses on Coursera and other online class sites, if you don't want to go to college and pay for courses. Or pick a series of textbooks learners use in classes - f9r beginner 1 and 2, intermediate 1 and 2. This could look like Chinese textbooks that teach HSK 1-6, or Japanese Textbooks that Teach N5-N1. Yes lots of people don't like "traditional study." But if you struggle to figure out how to improve, doing up to intermediate 2 classes then just practicing reading, listening, and chatting with people will teach you enough to do many things in the language. Intermediate 2 will prepare you enough to understand SOME shows, some reading materials, talk about conversational topics.
Alternative good options for beginners who struggle to pick a study material: pick a study method or approach and copy it. Do exactly what it says, progress through it regularly studying new stuff. Refold is a study approach with directions "do anki cards - usually premade sentence decks for a language (study new stuff regularly), and immerse regularly - practice understanding". So if you like Refold, look up Refold for the language you're learning and use the resources it recommends. (I suggest NOT making your own study materials such as your own anki sentence cards if you are bad at self motivating and making your own study materials as this could cause you to give up). Dreaming Spanish is a Great comprehensible input approach to language learning with a guide on the website to follow and lessons to follow for 1000 hours and directions on what to do after. It also has a community that mentions what resources they used like podcasts, and you can copy what others did. You like ALG and are learning Thai? There's youtube channels with ALG lessons and ALG tutor/teaching websites you can book lessons on. Just pick a study approach and STICK TO IT.
As long as you study new stuff regularly, and practice understanding the things you have studied before, you will learn a language. It mostly comes down to that, and how many hours you study.
Some people just keep repeatedly studying stuff they already studied so they don't make progress, or they studied 50 hours when... its probably going to take hundreds or thousands of hours.
If you like a very specific study method for a very specific goal? Find someone who already achieved your goal with your study method, and copy what they did. Use the materials they used (or improve on what they did and find equivalent materials that work better for you). Do the study activities they did. You have a good chance of getting similar results. That's how I came up with all my reading study plans... I found someone who'd already learned to read chinese, or french, and copied what they did. It worked. I'm using Dreaming Spanish as a guide now to figure out how to improve my listening skills, copying the suggestions dreaming spanish has for studying, its working well so far. I found the Listening Reading Method really cool, and copied that for a while, and did see significant improvements in my reading and listening skill after doing it.
