fluency

Google "spanish fluency" and you'll see an interesting mish-mash of results.

Some of the top hits are people discussing how to become fluent or (in a good many cases) someone trying to sell a method for becoming fluent quickly & easily.

At this point, I have vague fluency goals of things like being able to carry on more meaningful conversations, which I suspect is true of the (fabled) typical language learner.

Audio courses such as Pimsleur, Learning Spanish Like Crazy, variations on FSI, etc. are oriented toward developing a foundation of basic conversational ability.

Vocabulary-building is also key. I've seen it said that you can get through emergency situations by being able to say, "blood doctor me help cut ouch" better than you could with perfect grammar but total inability to express the fact that you're bleeding & need help. This strikes me as a fascinating argument, but I hope I don't have to put it to the test any time soon!

Pimsleur provides some useful vocabulary, but it's not my only source of new words. I turn on closed captioning and watch Plaza Sesamo (Spanish language version of Sesame Street), MixMex (Spanish language pop music videos), El Canal de Historia (History Channel in Spanish), and other shows.

Most of this is frankly lost on me, but I look things up, listen, and gradually understand more and more.

I make use of various Spanish textbooks, workbooks, and reading material, as well, although I'm focused more on Pimsleur than anything else until I finish off Spanish 3. Even considering its limitations, Pimsleur seems to provide the glue that makes sense of much of the other material at my disposal.

I should have a copy of Destinos on the way soon, which I understand attempts to expose the student to a vocabulary I've seen estimated to be 10 times larger than that of Pimsleur.

The learning tools are great, but for my purposes, engaging in conversation whenever possible, in whatever limited ways I can manage, is what really moves the process forward. All the study is just to help me find a way to communicate when the opportunities present themselves.