Describe the most effective thing you have done to advance your language learning

[kelvin921019]

My experience in English:
Reading / Vocabulary: find a few intermediate level novels and digest the whole book from scratch. Look up every word. Make sure I recognise most of the meaning.
Writing: find a teacher who brutally criticise my writing every week and forced me to re-write every bad sentences until he is satisfied with the result

[IronMike]

1. Talking with native speakers: Not everyone has ready access to a native speaker IRL, but with today's tech (if you're reading this, you have the tech) you can probably find someone to speak with. My Russian really improved when I (luckily) lived in Russophone countries.

2. Reading. Lots of reading. In the midst of Turbo-Serbo (16 week full-time BCS class requiring 2/2 or higher Russian or Czech), listening was killing me. Still killing most of the class. In our daily lab hour one day we complained about it. Our very experienced instructor told us to read more. (This was 1997, not really the internet age we have now, so cassette tapes or nothing.) I thought he was blowing smoke, but I did what he said. I read a lot of native material (DLI library is awesome). Can't be sure that's what got me the 2+ on the Listening DLPT, but it certainly didn't hurt!