Consuming media isn’t going to bring you to fluency by itself. You’ll have to do some simultaneous self-study — but how you study will greatly impact your results. The ultimate goal of fluency is two-fold. You want to understand, and be understood. Being understood requires that you know how to produce words and sentences on the fly. In other words, you need to get better at recalling.

In order to get better at recalling, you’re going to have to do a lot of recalling. It’s just how our brains work. A common technique among language learners is to use flash cards. But, I don’t suggest making hundreds of hand-written index cards (unless that’s your thing). You can employ technology to make the process so much better. There are plenty of digital flash card programs out there, but my all-time favorite is Anki.

Anki is a spaced-repetition flash card system. Spaced-repetition just means that Anki will increase the interval of time between subsequent reviews of previously learned cards to exploit the psychological spacing effect. Cards aren’t being retrieved at random, they’re strategically chosen when you’re most likely to need to see them to optimize long-term memorization. If you’ve never given it a try, you really should — you’ll be amazed at how efficient it is. To beat it all, Anki is free to use and open source.

But even if you choose to not use a spaced repetition solution, make sure you leave some time in between individual card reviews. Reviewing the same 4 cards repeatedly may make you feel like you’ve mastered them, but that mastery won’t last long term. It’s called overlearning — something you’ve experienced if you’ve ever crammed last minute for a test and then subsequently forgotten it all. Your brain needs some time in between learning sessions or it won’t retain information long term.

My last piece of advice is to never force yourself to learn a language through rote memorization or studying grammar books unless that brings you joy. Language learning should be fun and exciting. If you’re having fun you’ll eventually reach your goals. Don’t give up.

Anki can be found at https://apps.ankiweb.net.