An example to us all

How I Learned French in 10 Months - "A geek is faced with a task of quickly learning French to pass a standardized test. He manages to accomplish it in 10 months, largely in his spare time, and using easily-accessible technology together with cheap or free resources. "

Inspiring stuff, and everyone should be able to pick up some good learning ideas. Myself, I can't help thinking that a learning strategy based solely around Harry Potter might leave you with a, well, interesting vocabulary, but it's a great example of how much you can achieve by making good use of widely-available resources. I couldn't agree more with his recommendation of Schaum's Outline Grammar - no pain, no gain, everyone needs to slog through grammar exercises until they've learned their stuff.