Describe the best way to learn something new

I'll use learning a new language as my example, specifically Spanish, which is something I'd genuinely like to get properly good at rather than just app-level conversational. The method I'd use isn't really an app on its own, though I'd probably still use one for vocabulary — it's finding a way to actually speak with real people regularly, whether that's a language exchange, a tutor online, or ideally both, because I'm fairly convinced that passive study only gets you so far before it stops translating into anything useful in an actual conversation. I'd choose that method specifically because I've tried the purely app-based route before, with a different language, and ended up with a strange kind of knowledge — I could recognise a huge number of words on a screen but completely froze the one time I actually needed to ask someone for directions in real life. Speaking regularly forces you to notice exactly where the gaps are, which no amount of quiet studying at home really replicates. As for how I'd know it was working, I don't think it would be some formal test — it would be smaller things, like managing an unplanned conversation without mentally translating every sentence first, or being able to follow a joke rather than just the literal words. That shift from constructing sentences to just having them arrive is, to me, the real sign that something's actually sinking in rather than just sitting there memorised.