My basic strategy is that component composition gives you more leverage than memorizing individual words. Most languages have some degree of composition for voc

My basic strategy is that component composition gives you more leverage than memorizing individual words. Most languages have some degree of composition for vocabulary, like root-words, prefixes/suffixes, or individual chinese characters (and the radicals they're built up from) for CJK languages. Learning those root-words/components and how to put them together into compound words, or learning how to compose words into sentences by learning grammar gives you the most leverage, once you have a small base vocabulary to practice with - it doesn't just let you build more words, it also gives you bits and pieces you can look for to help you parse out meaning of things you don't know. For vocabulary, focus memorization on verbs and their conjugation - nouns and adjectives tend to be easier to look up (and not conjugated as much as verbs, and so easier to identify), and tend to be easier to infer from context if you don't know them - if you don't know a noun in conversation, you or they can usually point to it. I also listen to music in whatever language I'm learning - I used to use it to switch my brain between languages on the way from one language class to another. For memorization, the best way really is to just write it and repeat it a dozen times, so putting a song on repeat is really useful for refreshing your memory on commonly used words, practicing pronunciation, and even occasionally picking up new words by looking up lyrics, etc. Nothing beats immersion, though, just because, on top of practice (inherently prioritized by common usage), it gives you all the extra context to infer or reinforce meaning - memorizing words or working from a textbook means you have no extra information to go off of but what's written there. If you want to get those benefits of immersion without actual immersion, find things that mimic those qualities (extra context, prioritized by common usage, repetition), like music, kids TV shows, comic books, conversation, etc.