RE
what's the best way to learn a language (Spanish in this case)?
One incredibly, incredibly useful way to learn new languages, especially to put sentences together quickly and be able to understand texts is to learn constructions with infinitives. For example;
-want to/would like to
-can/to be able to
-have to
-going to
-need to
-like to
I can't give an exhaustive list. For me learning Spanish and Russian, this has been bloody excellent.
The great thing about those sorts of constructions, especially for languages like Spanish where the verbs can be a bugger is that you only have to worry about conjugating the verb in the phrase (e.g. poder, querer, ir etc.) & use can use what you're liking, want to do have to do in the infinitive.
When making vocab lists, it's helpful to divide it into types of words for example; 'what might you do (verbs in infinitive)', 'how might you describe things (for adjectives)', 'to what degree (adverbs), how often does that happen (adverbs). It's helpful to do that because if you want to exercise grammar, you've got a neatly-organized list.
NOTE;
In some languages such as Spanish and Russian and some other languages, you'll find
'back to front' verbs of which 'to like' something is one. The sentence is arranged;
Indirect object (to me)+verb+thing being liked (subject or infinitive). The example phrases are
me gusta/me gustan+vocab (infinitive or noun)
мне нравится+vocab (infinitive or noun nominative case)
These constructions literally translate as 'to me is pleasing x'.
me gusta tomar cerveza con mis amigos. I like to drink beer with my friends. That literally translates into 'to me is pleasing drinking beer ('tomar' meaning both to take and to have a drink in the infinitive form) with my friends. In this 'me' translates to 'to me'. We can use this construction both to talk about things we like and things we like doing (using the infinitive). For example, talking about things we like doing; me gusta nadar, me gusta viajar. Talking about things; no me gustan perros, me gusta mucho cervaza.
other verbs in Spanish used in this construction include importar (to be important to), cae bien (to like someone), cae mal (to dislike someone)
Now Russian
мне нравится читать книги;
I like to read books, literally translating into 'to me it's pleasing reading books'. The word 'читать' is an infinitive, (the imperfective version talking about something habitual, haven't got time to go into specifics of the language).
'мне' is the 'to me' or 'for me' form of 'я' (I), known as the dative case. The construction is the same; indirect object (dative)+verb (agreeing with subject)+subject (nominative case). The great thing about Russian is that nouns and adjectives are also case-sensitive not just pronouns, trust me, it's not that scary, it's fun.
To conclude
Anyway, sentence constructions that can use infinitives regardless of what language you're learning are incredibly useful little tools for talking about anything and for learning vocabulary. Once you're got a few ways to cobble sentences together, and
can recognize the infinitive forms of verbs in texts then hey presto.