The „fast track“ to learn a language is undoubtedly to use it more often. There are tons of ways like reading the news in that language, watching Television and listening to radio and songs, reading children books… All these work well if I were a self-motivated person. But well, it always works better for me if there is a little pressure to a thing. And thus, in order to be able to communicate in German without much difficulties after a year, I choose to learn German in a language school, practise with my classmates after class, find some language partners, and even write emails in German. Apart from paying the school fee, all other ways involve another party and thus it gives me more motivation to use German.
I am so lucky that when I propose the idea of writing emails in German to my German friend, he replied me as follows (extracted from an email):
„no problem, you send your emails in German if you like (Kein Problem, du kannst deine Emails in deutsch schicken, wenn du möchtest.). Also no problem to tell you what is wrong (Es ist auch kein Problem dir zu sagen, was falsch ist.). Another idea I could write the mail in German and English (Eine andere Idee wäre, dir die Mail in deutsch und englisch zu schreiben..).“
I am so touched after I read the lines as I didn’t expect that he would write in both German and English, which would double the time he spends in writing the email. Truly thankful for his effort and I will definitely pay much more effort to learn German in every way I can!!