1. Get a french lover (worked for me).
2. Read the paper in French
3. Watch the news in French and English; the events and words start to align
4. Watch the TV, French cartoons if possible
5. Watch DVDs in French with English Subtitles or vice-versa.
6. Find a local French Society and get into their social scene.
7. Buy the Rosetta Stone Software. It’s a good language program based on naming thing through pictures and situtaions to teach language.
8. Take a french class at the University
9. See if the university has a french club
10. date someone interested in learning french

Just remember to pace yourself. Just go to a website like parismatch.com and read a few articles, or turn on a DVD occasionally if it has French subtitles or French audio, it’s a good way to practice.

Reading can help improve your vocabulary (for obvious reasons) AND grammar (you continue to get a feel for what “sounds” right in French). All of the suggestions above are great; I would add:

Find some books you liked as a kid or that are so familiar you almost feel you know them by heart--“Goodnight Moon”, “Where the Wild Things Are”, “Harold and the Big Purple Crayon” or others-and find their French translations. Or simply go to the children’s section of your local Borders or other large store; there’s usually a section near the picture books for “Untranslated Books”. (Amazon.fr is also a good source) Depending on where you are with your French, grown up books that aren’t much of a challenge to read can be helpful too (a friend of mine used to stock up on trashy novels written in German).

Look for language exchange sites online. You can find people who want learn your english who are native french speakers. There are some pretty good ones out there.

Searching for “Language exchange” or “language pen pals” should work. My favorite is SharedTalk.com

The Pimsleur audio course is an excellent introduction to the language. It will get you speaking right away with some useful phrases. Some libraries have this.

To take it to actually LEARN French (Intermediate level):
- Assimil
- Foreign Service Institute (FSI)(http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/) course can be downloaded for FREE and is an indepth complete course! The FSI course has extremely dry content/format (i.e. drills and is a little dated)
- Michel Thomas
- Internet: radio, TV, newspapers

If you just want to learn some key phrases though, go with just about any French audio course in most bookstores/libraries marketed toward travellers.

I also heavily recommend the French in Action videos. A bit dated (1980s) but fun and monolingual. I think you can find them if you search on learner.org

Do pace yourself with them though and don’t be afraid to watch an episode more than once.

In general, have fun.

French wikipedia is a bit easier than most news articles, too.