Did not take any holidays. You need to work on it every day, 365 days per year. Lots of little tricks. Like reading books written for 10 year-olds, by native au

Did not take any holidays. You need to work on it every day, 365 days per year. Lots of little tricks. Like reading books written for 10 year-olds, by native authors of the language and set in a country where this is the native language. No translations of famous English writers. 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.