Post: #1

With the amount of free resources out there, there's no reason to purchase anything to learn a language. I've been studying Portuguese and Spanish, and I've been pleased with my progress.

This is a list of podcasts for many 40 languages http://www.openculture.com/freelanguagelessons
The best rated podcast is Korean. I have no interest in the language but I checked out the site, and it's smooth.

Here are some sites to supplement the podcasts
http://duolingo.com/#
http://www.memrise.com/ (thanks roosh)
http://www.livemocha.com/sihp

Additionally, you can find native speakers of your desired language who want to trade lessons on Couchsurfing. I've posted on groups in Mexico and Brazil. Everyone wants to learn English so you will have no shortage of practice partners on Skype.

Any critique of my strategy? Any more tips, sites etc?

Post: #2

It depends on the language. Tim Ferriss did a piece a while ago about breaking language down into a math equation, and that works pretty well for learning language basics -
"I (want/need/give) one (red/new/delicious) apple."
Learn the sentence structure. Get a few verbs and some adjectives and start expanding your vocabulary.

Reading Chinese and Japanese was broken down into an easy system awhile back, called Remembering Simplified/Traditional Hanzi. I started on the first book earlier this week. The methodology seems sound as long as you continue to practice, any slacking will see an immediate drop off in your progress.

The Pimsleur Method is pretty good, too, but it does have it's flaws. You'll definitely learn some basics if you're an audio learner. Rosetta Stone is crazy expensive, but does give you live conversations with professional teachers (IF you buy the real thing and don't get a bootleg copy). The bootleg copies are probably better to be used along with another program.

Post: #3

"How to Learn Any Language" by Barry Farber. Can't recommend this enough. I have only had the book for two weeks or so but his memory trick for vocab literally upped my German to the next level in terms of learning those esoteric ass words that I always forget. While just using the word in a sentence will keep it in my head for a while, his particular memory trick really helps.

Also Roosh's post on "How to learn Spanish" and "How to learn Portuguese" are pretty good.

http://www.rooshv.com/learning-foreign-language

Post: #4

Nice list. A site that I have used to help me has been SharedTalk, where you can put your native language down and select the ones you want to learn. After that you can communicate with people in a bunch of ways like email pen palling and voice chats(credit to Technics). I've also started listening to French rap and watching French movies on Netflix and that has helped a lot in addition to Duolingo and Michel Thomas.