Learning a foreign language

I tried learning French in 2 months last year and failed....

I took classes at the alliance francais in NOLA for a while. It was a mixture of course work and group conversations (and a lot of wine drinking). After doing that for a year (1x per week or so), I had no issues travelling around rural France and communicating the basics.

I live in Germany now and have a private tutor twice a week and am immersed in the language. Way better, obviously, but it is a lot of work. After a day of meetings in German you will have a massive headache.

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learned a foreign language after graduating high school?

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Spanish in college. Could read pretty well after two years. you learn what you work on. It takes 4 years to master any romance language. it takes 5 for Asian languages, because you are learning a representation system too.
pictograms. stylized pictograms.

Spanish is ideal because you are able to use it constantly in many regions.

Google is pretty handy to use to keep it up. You can read the press in whatever languages on Google.
I have spent a lot of time at work reading French and Spanish news.

I want to learn French or Spanish... although I was told German would be easier to learn

Took Spanish I and Spanish II in high school.
My girlfriend's mom's side speaks nothing but Spanish. I can understand what they're saying and I can reply with terrible Spanish.. If it was the other way around, it would be like:

Q: How are you?
A: Yes

While it doesn't make sense, it's a positive response... So they get the picture

Sorry... Haven't slept in 2 days

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What method was most effective for you?

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I never pass up an opportunity to warn people away from Rosetta Stone. It's garbage, especially if you are studying a language that uses a different script.

In short, Rosetta Stone uses the philosophy that you should learn a language now the way you learned English as a child. By this they mean that there is essentially no instruction or guidance in the lessons and that you are thrown right in.

The issue for me is that as adults, we have more available to us to learn a language. I would love to learn about sentence structure and other grammar rules by having them explained to me, not having to trudge through trial and error.

For example, I used Rosetta Stone for Persian/Farsi. Persian writing uses old and very formal words while the spoken version of the same sentence uses different words and conjugation. I had no idea of this by going through Rosetta Stone because they don't explain anything; I was totally confused. I started using Pimsleur software on the advice of a friend and found that there was this written/spoken difference and I realized I wasn't crazy after all.


Edit: In terms of suggestions in addition to good software, listen to news, movies, songs, and podcasts in that language. Watching German movies with the subtitles on did wonders for me. You always hear about foreigners learning English by watching Friends or The Simpsons, do the same with the language you're trying to learn. With Youtube, the Apple Store etc, it's cheaper and easier to do than ever before.