IMHO,I am eminently qualified to answer this question because I am coming up on the one-year mark of seriously trying to learn Spanish, mostly on my own.

Up front, let me make this disclosure to perhaps prevent you from freaking out when you hear how long it's taking me: I'm 58 years old, and the task has been much more difficult than I expected. If you are significantly younger, you probably won't take as long as I am taking.

Rather than tell you what I did, I'll describe what I would do now if I had it to do over again. My experience is this: REPETITION is the only thing that works. I cannot emphasize this too much.

1) Before you do anything else, get the pronunciation down right. I used an online course (there are many, and I got this one free through my public library). I also used one disc of a CD-based language course. Keep practicing until you get pretty good at it--use a tape recorder to check your work.

2) Buy one or more books in the McGraw-Hill “Practice Makes Perfect” series, starting with Basic Spanish, followed by Spanish Verb Tenses (both by Dorothy Richmond). Do every exercise in the book, in order, and check your answers against the answers in the back of the book. (You can also go online and hear the correct answers being spoken.) Then use a sheet of paper to hide the (correct) answers and go over the same exercise items again, and again, and again.

3) Whenever you learn a new word or phrase, write it down along with its English translation. Keep these pages and review them.

4) Sometime after you have gotten your pronunciation down correctly, you may want to take a local or online Spanish class. You'll learn more doing it this way because, being familiar with pronunciation and spelling, you can struggle with the language itself. Continue to keep your word list. For each hour of "class," spend at least an hour of outside study of the same material. I've used several online courses, which I rate as follows: livemocha.com (best), mangolanguages.com (good), babbel.com (so-so). Destinos, a story-based video introduction to Spanish, is at http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html.

5) The hardest thing for me is learning to speak new sentences on my own, especially in conversation mode. For this I'm using the Pimsleur audio-only training CDs. Their idea is to teach entirely through conversation, with virtually no formal learning--no grammar, and (obviously) no spelling. Actually, I started with Pimsleur, but blindly repeating strings of phonemes didn't work for me, so I gave it up. I recently returned to it, now that I have pronunciation and moderate amounts of grammar and reading ability--and it's just what I need.

Miscellaneous factoids and advice: The website spanishdict.com is my constant companion during studying. Don't spend big bucks on anything (for example, I got my Pimsleur course, used, from eBay). Don't be seduced by any online or computer course that promises to deliver any level of language proficiency--only practice, away from the computer, can deliver that.

Take an immersion course in a foreign country if you can. There may be a local group of language-learners near you.

Flashcard programs can help; on my iPod touch, I use Flashcards Deluxe, and there are several good open-source programs for your computer. Switch among various different kinds of practice; variety combats boredom. Practice at least an hour daily, six days a week. Try different things, and see what works for you.

Wish me luck--in six more months, I may actually be talking to people.