1) Believe Saffy from Ab Fab when she explains that when it comes to learning a language, "you just have to learn it. It doesn't just happen because you wear the right shoes or smoke the right cigarettes."
2) Find an online publication in that language that has a really short horoscope and sit and read it with a dictionary every day. Jot down some of the recurring words about work, feelings and relationships or any other things you're most likely going to want to be able to discuss.
3) Find a good teacher, get lessons, pay him or her well, do your homework, show up on time and generally stick at it.
4) Indulge your inner child by reading children's stories in that language. If these are too hard and based on old-fashioned language, find translations of children's books you already know and read them in the new language. Sometimes it's even more amusing than the original.
5) Listen to the radio, songs and any free podcasts you can get on topics you are interested in in that language and even if you still barely speak a word and only understand about 5% of it, listen for the words you DO know and repeat them to practise the pronunciation whenever you hear them.
6) Find some online flashcards with audio that give you some basic vocabulary or basic verb charts that you'll need to know. (If you're a total beginner, start with the obvious - 'to be', 'to have', 'to go' etc and then you'll have learnt the hardest ones, because the most common verbs are usually the most irregular.)
7) Repeat and continue.
P.S. Going out with a friend and having a couple of drinks and then speaking in that language for a while also works quite well. You tend to hesitate less and 'go for it' with the language you do know, which is much better than stumbling along slowly, trying to find the correct ending in your head before you come out with anything.
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