About acquiring vocabulary: I use to memorize a lot hundreds of words of content, as well as every part of the speech. In addition I use to listen to music a lot. And, the most important: reading news (in my case also sports news, from every basketball league) from every part of the world, always in the target language.
About speaking: I always like to explain the swimming pool case. I describe languages as swimming pools. The walls and the floor is the grammar, and the water is the vocabulary. I don’t care if I have a quarter of water: I jump from a 10 meter platform and speak it anyway.
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What method do you use to memorize vocabulary? I’m too lazy for memorizing big amounts of words, so I just use words that I want to learn in context and for some I create mnemonics. The nice thing about mnemonic is that I’ll never forget such words. I created some mnemonics for a couple of Persian words. While I forgot most of what I learnt because I stopped studying Persian, even years after I remember all the words that I mnemonics for.
About your allegory of the swimming pool: It does sound that you might hurt yourself if you jump from a 10 meter platform into a pool where’s hardly water… Why not carefully step into the shallow water instead of risking your life? You’re like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv9AB1VvJe4. 
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Yeah, literally. The idea is to speak anyway no matter how many errors; the point is, trying to speak without any fear to commit errors and let the other person to correct you.
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Hi Miriam! I’ve been using The Goldlist Method for acquiring Japanese vocab, and it’s been great!
I’m too lazing for memorization, setting flash cards or using apps like Anki, só this method was perfect for me.
It’s basically creating lists and reviewing them
Periodically. You can find more info about here: https://youtu.be/2__3bGfSjuE
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Hey again, Mayumi! Love Machová; she was my entrance into the polyglot community. 
Can I ask how you use the goldlist method for Japanese since the components of the language are so different? I had considered it for general vocabulary, but I find I need to choose which aspect of the word I want to learn (meaning, kana reading, pitch accent, etc.) or it’s overwhelming and I can’t even reach the 30% success rate.
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Machová was one of the first polyglots I started following online, too!
It’s very hard learning every aspect of Japanese with the Goldlist method, right? I’ve tried too, but it just did not work yet. As I am really a beginner in Japanese (I’m taking N4 test this year), I’m using it for general meaning. Sometimes I add a note or two for kana reading, but I found out that the simpler the better! I’ll continue to try to find an alternative to make the Goldlist more robust, though. It’s really working and helping me kickstart Japanese vocab!
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It’s very important to consider the pragmatics, the logics behind, the system and the culture associated with, when we approach a language learning method. That’s why language mentoring and coaching is very important. it doesn’t matter if the coach speaks six or twelve or thirty languages: it’s the turning point that you became a polyglot and later a Hyperpolyglot. How to learn languages and nurture your languages through a different scope regardless the language method.
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You might like the Fluent Forever app. It makes it super easy to make flashcards. And they recently added Japanese.
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I would say that this depends on your personality. If you are introvert and shy …this is way scary 
I know it’s correct, but scary.
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@Mayumi I tried with Goldlist too, but with Spanish. It kind of worked, but not so much. I tried to do it every day for 30 days and then I gave up. I will probably come back to it in the future, but for now I prefer Memrise.
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Hi Mayumi,
I am trying the Gold list method with Japanese, I do find it a chore to keep up. It does look like I might be abandoning it and resort to just reading a lot of materials to improve my vocabulary. Is like osmosis, I keep checking and learning the words until it gets into my system.
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