You need to get a language partner. Rote learning is nothing if you can't recall when you need to. Just being able to make repetitive small-talk - but being ab

You need to get a language partner. Rote learning is nothing if you can't recall when you need to. Just being able to make repetitive small-talk - but being able to do so with a degree of confidence is the base for expanding your "working set" into more useful and fluent conversations. Beyond that, I found Anki to be the best flash-card system. Customizable, it's great if you are motivated enough to design and build your own card decks. Getting a "basic" vocab of around 1000 words should be a rapid short-term goal over 3 months or so (that's 10 new words a day, more than that will be challenging for most people). And find a good textbook. There are a lot of ordinary books out there. But there are also usually a couple of highly regarded/respected series for a given language that stand out above the rest. For the two language I have learned they are the Integrated Korean series, and Japanese for Busy People. But...go back to the first point. Language partner. There is not point trying to study a language in a vacuum, you need to be recalling in realistic conversations scenarios everyday ideally.