It will be hard to learn a language without the motivation of needing (or wanting) it for a specific goal. I'm currently learning spanish with the aim of it be

It will be hard to learn a language without the motivation of needing (or wanting) it for a specific goal. I'm currently learning spanish with the aim of it being useful when I take my family on a extended tour around south america sometime in 2014 or 2015. I don't expect to be fluent by then, but hopefully am able to learn enough to get by. (I spent time in France last year, having not made the effort to learn any french - not an experience I would recommend!) For actual tools, I'm currently using Anki (specifically ankidroid). This is just a brute force tool for rapidly increasing vocabulary (similar to supermemo) but free. Previously I have tried Rosetta stone, but although easy, I found it to be an incredibly slow way of making progress. Take what I say with a grain of salt though - I'm still only learning so I'm far from an expert in this area =)