My past experiences language learner have been in Spanish. I took 221 Intensive Spanish here but I didn't come out of it speaking/understanding very much. I then went to Argentina and became more or less fluent over the course of 6 months. Classes were not a priority as they were pass/fail and I was there to experience the culture and the people (I passed all of them with fairly good grades). I stayed with a host family who did not speak any English. They were surprised because I didn't carry around a dictionary (electronic or booklet) like many others before had. I never looked words up or looked up grammar until I was pretty sure I had figured it out myself. By figuring it out myself (through questions, describing words when I didn't know them, and intensive listening) I developed a strong language logic. As I got more advanced I continued doing the same thing and it seemed to work. Using the language logic I had developed I was able to guess at structures and "invent" words that wound up being correct.
During this semester I have built upon that experience to guide me in my autonomous language learning. I payed a lot of attention to the videos I watched and my language partner meetings. Because I was not surrounded by the language some of the tactics I used in Argentina didn't apply. I did find a need to spend time studying.
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