Everybody's got their own preferred method, but the way I've gone around things is by starting to actively listen to the language with the related transcript to

Everybody's got their own preferred method, but the way I've gone around things is by starting to actively listen to the language with the related transcript to get a good ear for the phonemes (you can do that with songs or videos). Then I move on to reading the language with a translation or a dictionary on the side. That's what maximizes the efficiency of language acquisition for me. I leave the rest (getting a better understanding of the grammar, speaking it with a decent flow) for later.