Practice writing, make friends. Lang-8 is da bomb.

While I usually cringe a little at websites that advertise themselves with banners that say things like “LEARN A LANGUAGE! FREE!”, since usually they’re a Rosetta Stone-esque gimmicky kind of site that ends up teaching you how to say such crucial phrases as “THE PURPLE ELEPHANT IS SLEEPING UNDER THE TABLE” and not much else…there is one website that I find to be pre-tty dang cool, and that is Lang-8.