No, you’re a motivated, worldly wise soon to be bilingual superstar.

The method depends on your goals. I’ll offer my process, which I have learned through trial and error while teaching myself Spanish. This guide is to reach a high level of fluency. Some of the steps overlap, hence the strange numbering.

Step 1. Pick up a phase book or small bilingual dictionary with an explanation of the grammar. This is just to get a feel for the main grammar points.

Step 2. Start watching all your TV with TL (target language) dubs, and English subs. Pay attention to the sounds. It’s hard, but don’t zone out. This is to her a feel for the sound of the language. You can also start to listen to music in the TL.

Step 3. Look up ‘minimal pairs’ in the TL. If you can get the audio for this, even better. Search YouTube for ‘minimal pairs + TL’. This will give you a good grasp of all the sounds. If the language has tones, learn about these now. You don’t need to master them yet. That will come after more listening. Some people say English doesn’t have tones, but it does. Like when the tone goes up with questions. The difference between, ‘You call these chips’ and ‘You can these chips?’ The tone changes the meaning. I’m some languages, tones are far more widespread. E.g. in Chinese, changing the tone of ‘ma’ can mean horse, mum, or can make a sentence a question. It’s more straightforward than it sounds.

Step 4. Pick up a course book that comes with audio. Assimil and Pimsleur are highly rated, although I’ve never tried them. I like the Teach Yourself books. Start with a beginner book. Careful, because some are for ‘in class’ use and don’t really work if you’re teaching yourself; each book tends to tell you what it offers. You can also check to see if Language Transfer or FSI (warning: US State source!) have a free audio course in your TL.

When you get round to the coursebook, don’t do the exercises yet. Just read it to improve the map of the language that you got at step 1. If you’re like me, you may find it helpful to look up some English grammar, otherwise you may not know what the TL grammar terms refer to in English. This can be frustrating. Stick with it. Make notes of the TL main grammar points. How does gender work? What is the order of verbs, nouns, adjectives? What are the basic tenses? Try to write a summary of the main grammar points on one or two sheets of paper. You can refer to this in the next step.

Step 5. I would suggest the listening-reading method. I explained it and posted links in the [email protected] community. The method works for any language. (This is contentious, but if you want a decent accent, you need to listen as much as possible before you start reading and before you start speaking. You don’t have to delay forever. 200 hours of listening is enough. Incidentally, after understanding 200 hours of audio, you will understand the majority of most other controlled speech (i.e. spoken by pros speaking clearly).)

Step 6/7/8. Go back through the grammar book. This time do the exercises. Then move on to the intermediate book, doing the exercises. Then to the advanced book, doing the exercises. (These things usually come in series. Not every series has an advanced book.)

Step 6/7/8. While working through the course books, continue to listen-read. You will see the grammar that you learn ‘in the wild’. You’ll improve quickly. Sometime after 200 hours of listening-reading, you’ll achieve ‘natural listening’ where you can understand audiobooks without the English text. Keep listening and/or listening-reading.

Step 6/7/8. Start to read. Newspapers, novels, film reviews, Twitter, anything. You’ll spot the grammar ‘in the wild’ and consolidate the language that you learn in the course book and that you hear in the audiobooks.

Step 9/10. If you have not started already, start to shadow the audios. It’s part of listening-reading, but you might not have been confident enough to start doing this yet. If not, now’s the time. It’s weird, but it’s a lot easier than it sounds when you get into it.

Step 9/10. Start watching all your media in the TL. Either original shows or with TL dubs. You want to wean yourself off using subtitles. It’ll be hard at first, but you’ll progress quickly if you’ve been following this short guide.

Step 11/12. Read as much as you can. Read as slowly as you need to, to understand the messages and the plot/gist. Your comprehension will build rapidly. It’s tough at first. Stick with it. Start with easier texts; you’ll have to learn to decide which texts are easier.

Step 11/12. You might want to try this one earlier, but I find it the most difficult so it’s near the bottom of my list: speak with others. You can use HelloTalk or Tandem, or attend a language exchange, or visit the country, or you can pay for a tutor on iTalki or similar site. I’ve not have much luck with finding partners, which is why this isn’t my priority. And I haven’t paid for tutors.

Step 13. You might find this comes naturally, earlier on. Start writing. ‘Drill’ grammar by practising sentences with different verbs and tenses. Get some lined paper and practice the grammatically correct sentences from the exercises in the coursebook, but use different verbs and nouns. Play with the vocab. Have fun. The trick is to build ‘automaticity’. Explain what you read and watch in the TL, in the TL. Try to find someone to give some feedback. Keep practising.

Step 14. This may come sooner if you have people to speak to. Learn ‘islands’ short texts that you can swim to in a conversation. E.g. if you meet someone and they ask about your language learning, they’re going to ask some predictable questions. How long? Why? Have you visited? What do you do? Where do you live? Do you like cheese? Learn short answers and memorise them. Embellish your answer. This will make it seem like you’re a much better speaker than you are (and show off what you do know), and will encourage the other person to keep speaking in the TL. Once you get into the flow with memorised texts, too, it makes it easier to speak spontaneously and helps to build rapport with the other person, meaning they keep speaking and you get more practice.

Tips When you start to read, it’s okay to use a dictionary for a translation. This won’t always be helpful. Words have multiple meanings. But if you get the core meaning from the dictionary, you’ll build on this quickly.

Read books on the Kindle app and use the pop-up dictionary.

If you can find the PDF of a coursebook, you might find that the publisher hosts the audio, which you can access for free. Don’t get carried away. Pick one book and stick to it. If it’s rubbish, pick another one. But don’t start multiple courses at the same time.

You can acquire a language if you understand messages in that language. So you need to find ‘comprehensible input’. It’s hard to get this as a beginner who is self teaching. The above guide is intended to help you build up from zero to native content, all the while listening to increasingly complex but always comprehensible input.

It takes time to learn a language. If you can spend an average 1 hour per day, you’ll be able to enjoy the language in a year’s time and have basic conversations. It’s the hours that count, not the years. It just takes several years to build up the hours! All in, if you follow this guide, you may be able to understand spoken Vietnamese in 400 hours (including 200+ hours of listening-reading). That’s just over an hour a day for a year. It will speed things up dramatically to have as many ‘marathon’ sessions as you can. On days that you can spend 3–8 hours or more with the language, you’ll get a ‘buzz’ in your head and the TL will ring in your ears. This is the sweet spot, although it’s not always possible.

Vietnamese is a Foreign Service Institute category 3 language. It’s feasible for a good learner to learn a cat 3 language to a high level of working knowledge (proficient enough to be a US diplomat, etc) in about 2200 hours. But that includes full time study for 1100 hours in small groups, and the people are being paid and have already learned another language as an adult. For us mortals who grew up with just English and who aren’t paid to learn, expect it to take a bit longer. Again, this is to a level where you’d be able to do a degree in the TL. If you don’t need that, you’ll be good enough much, much sooner.

There are other ways. And once you’re less than halfway through, you’ll learn what works for you and be able to write your own guide. Still, this is how I would do it. Hope this helps. You’ve got this!