Learning languages outside of high school/university...

[EvangelionZeta]

Latley I've been thinking I want to keep my Japanese, and even improve it to the point where I can pass JLPT3 (as in the current one) or JLPT2.  I've also wanted to learn how to write Chinese, because whilst I can speak the language near-fluently, I'm pretty much illiterate.  Any ideas, and does anyone else have random desires like these? :p

[Noblesse]

Oh god yes, I've been wanting to continue with German for soooooooooo long, but I could never fit it in at university so I've been looking at CAE courses instead, probably postpone it until after I finish uni & my CA.

[ninwa]

I've also wanted to learn how to write Chinese, because whilst I can speak the language near-fluently, I'm pretty much illiterate.

That's pretty much me... Regretting that my parents didn't force me to go to Chinese school now.

[MuggedByReality]

  Someone I knew came to write as well in French as she did in English (she was a USyd Arts/Law graduate) by writing a short essay in French every day for 9 months.

[schmalex]

My friend picked up French in year 11, knowing absolutely nothing about it and got 41 in it with almost no study by talking to French people over the internet and watching French movies, and then moving on to reading French books. He's actually amazing.

[gossamer]

^(y) best way to learn a language.

In all seriousness though, that's probably the only way I'm going to keep up my french since I've officially dropped next year. It doesn't bother me though, because I read quite a lot of french writing, and I know quite a few french people (on the internet) who I can "speak" the language to.

[mattrossi1]

Take a look at this website: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/

The website (and it's forum) contain numerous resources covering how difficult a language is to learn, what resources to use etc.  Many users in its forum are polyglots who speak several languages that to a large degree have taught themselves, so there is definitely plenty of experience in that area floating around there.

I know myself that I would love to take up German from the start at Uni, though I'm not sure how that would work out if I don't end up at Melbourne or Monash with the sort of degree I want to do (Computer Science).

[IntoTheNewWorld]

I'm trying to use these holidays to learn more Japanese with an impossible goal to pass N1 at the end of this year, after taking and quite possibly failing N2 last year. Also trying to learn Korean through some 2nd year Uni textbooks and SNSD songs these holidays after going through the Monash 1st year textbooks last year. I gave up Mandarin at this point in time because it's just too damn hard, and wish I stuck around at Viet school a bit longer so I actually read/write properly =/

Self study is the way to go! Mainly because I absolutely despise assignments (I never ever ever ever want to do something like Detailed Study for VCE again), and self study means you don't have to do them

[TrueTears]

Learning Chinese is insanely hard, my 8 year old cousin in China gets forced to memorise tons of essays per week, rote learn how to write characters over and over again every week.

Really the best way to learn how to write Chinese is to memorise and rewrite words over and over again, almost all schools in China employ this technique.