I have developed a way of learning a language that works for me. First I study with a textbook to learn to read the language, using a recording of the sounds to start saying the words to myself. When I finish the textbook, I start reading children’s books (for 7-10 year olds) with a dictionary. I advance to books for teenagers when I know enough words that it becomes tolerably fast. When I know enough words, I start writing the language in email when I am in conversations with people who speak that language. I don’t try actually speaking the language until I know enough words to be able to say the complex sorts of things I typically want to say. Simple sentences are almost as rare in my speech as in this writing. In addition, I need to know how to ask questions about how to say things, what a word means, and how certain words differ in meaning, and how to understand the answers. I first started actually speaking French during my first visit to France. I decided on arrival in the airport that I would speak only French for the whole 6 weeks. This was feasible because I could already read and write French. My insistence was frustrating to my colleagues, whose English was much better than my French. But it enabled me to learn. I decided to learn Spanish when I saw a page printed in Spanish and found I could mostly read it (given my French and English). I followed the approach described above, and began speaking Spanish during a two-week visit to Mexico, a couple of years later.

Richard Stallman, LifeStyle, Richard Stallman’s website, 2010, p. 5