My mother tongue is Dutch, as that is the language my family spoke growing up. My parents decided to give me a French education (we lived in Belgium then, which

My mother tongue is Dutch, as that is the language my family spoke growing up. My parents decided to give me a French education (we lived in Belgium then, which made that easier). I learned English through TV (Flemish TV channels, and some Walloon ones are subtitled instead of dubbed), BBC radio and Linux documentation. I would say I was proficient around age 8. Around age 14-15 I decided to switch my American accent to a more British one. I lived in southern France for some time, which exposed me to Spanish and Catalan. I'm not able to have a conversation, but I can follow a movie (I watched most of Narcos without subtitles). I took German classes in high school. I had a fair leg up thanks to my Dutch background. I wouldn't say I know the language in any shape or form, but I'm able to understand the rough lines of most written German. I moved to Denmark about a year ago, took some (paid for by the government) classes to learn the basics. Pronunciation is horrible, but I have a fairly firm grip on the basic grammar, sentence structure (fairly close to Dutch, in the end) and vocab. I still do a fair amount of Duolingo and often ask my colleagues to keep conversations in Danish instead of switching to English. Due to the amount of English loan words in technical conversation, it's fairly easy to follow that. It's the casual conversation that is a lot more difficult to understand. All of this to say: jump in. Move to another country, and don't rely on any kind of lingua franca to help you out. Watching TV in the language you're trying to learn, with either subtitles in a language you master, or once you've started getting a basic grip, subtitles in the same language as the spoken one. Another thing you can do is watch English shows with subtitles in your target language. Force yourself to read the subtitles (this can be hard to do if you're not used to it). This helps with common idioms, sentence structure, and everyday vocab. And read. Read a lot. Every country has a wealth of youth books, that, although not the most fascinating of reads, can be both challenging enough yet easy enough for beginners. Books also have the added advantage that they're asynchronous, meaning you can take time to reflect and research before hitting the next word. Edit: typo.