How to learn a language

Hate the whole vocabulary building process?  You may want to consider that, as even advanced language learners need to continue to build their own stores of the language.  Of course, the kind of details you require as a higher-level student might be a little bit different than those for someone who’s just starting out.

Fluency

Advanced language learners, at their stage, need to study for fluency.  Rather than memorize individual words like beginner and early intermediate learners, however, your focus should turn to larger phrases and chunks.  That’s because bigger, fuller components are typically what native speakers process.  Since you’re gunning for the same ability, you’ll have to develop the same patterns of learning.

Memory

If you’ve slogged the whole early stages of language learning, you’ve probably done some research on memory techniques.  Perhaps, even read up on how our memories work.  Whatever knowledge you applied that worked for you, continue doing it.  Except this time, do it in larger chunks, rather than the individual (sometimes incidental) words you used to do.

Contextual Guesswork

Learn to guess intelligently.  Sometimes, you will encounter words or phrases you haven’t heard before.  Rather than leaving it at that, try to “guess” what they mean based on the context of what else has been said.  That, right there, is an important aspect of many advanced language learning software and courses – the ability to apply what you’ve learned before to illuminate presently confusing items.