That being said, it can be nice to have some suggestions about what to do first and what to do next. I’m happy to oblige.
Over the previous three chapters, I’ve suggested the following:
1. Sound Play: Learn how to hear and produce the sounds of your target language and how spelling and sound interrelate.
2. Word Play: Learn 625 frequent, concrete words by playing Spot the Differences in Google Images, finding personal connections, and if needed, adding mnemonic imagery for grammatical gender.
3. Sentence Play: Begin turning the sentences in your grammar book into flash cards for new words, word forms, and word order. Use written output to fill in the gaps missing from your textbook.
Here’s what I suggest you do next:
1. If you haven’t already done so, learn the first half of your grammar book. Make flash cards for everything you find interesting.
2. Learn the top thousand words in your target language. Write out definitions and examples whenever you’re not entirely sure what a word means. About halfway through, you’ll find that you can understand a monolingual dictionary. Use it to help you learn the rest of your words.
3. Go back to your grammar book, skim through it, and grab any remaining bits of information you’d like.
4. Read your first book while listening to an audiobook.
5. Watch a full season of a dubbed TV show, reading episode summaries in your target language ahead of time.
6. Get a ton of speech practice. Get as much as you possibly can, either through an immersion program, a language holiday abroad, or through teachers on italki.com. If you get a private teacher, talk about the next thousand words from your frequency list and add specialized words for your particular interests. Together with your teacher, create example sentences and enter them into your SRS.
Then rinse and repeat as desired.
Note: even when you’re focusing on a book or TV show, never stop doing flash card reviews. Your flash cards get more and more useful the longer you use them. I like to review my flash cards for a full year before I stop completely. That way, I’ll have an easier time retaining all my words and grammar, even without doing any maintenance later.
Also, never entirely stop creating and learning new cards. In the past, I’ve run into situations where I wanted to maintain one of my languages without learning anything new. I did my daily reviews, but I stopped learning new flash cards. It got boring fast. At least in my experience, flash card reviews are only fun when you’re learning new things at the same time. So make sure you always have something new to learn—even just a couple of new words a day makes a huge difference.