Creating Bilingualism

I like to use a Transference Approach to teaching a second language.  Why? Because that is what I used to learn a second, and third language by myself. It works, you used what you already have, and you practice.

When I was living in Mexico I learn French. French was my second language. French took me longer to learn because I only knew Spanish. So it was a year before I was really fluent. When I decided to live in California, I used my Spanish and my French to learn English. I was fluent in 6 months. 

When I was in College, I become literate in Portuguese. What I did is that I used my Spanish, French, and English to apply and use to master Portuguese, I was able to do it faster because I had a great deal more of sounds from Spanish, French, and English. Then it was a matter of practicing. After a month, I was able to speak it, by the end of the trimester I was fluent. The more languages you speak, the faster it is when you learn your third, fourth, or fifth language. By then you will have more sounds in your brain that you can use to transferred into the new language you are learning. Then it is a matter of practicing.

What is Transference Approach?
It is when you teach your students (or yourself) to use the language they know with its sounds to apply it to a new language they are learning, and to make sense in order to communicate, to sound native as if you knew it all along.
I teach Spanish speakers to use their Spanish to transferred what they know into English. I start with the letter sounds, Spanish diphthongs, to imitate English as close as possible to talk.
I explicitly teach all the sounds until the students learn what is the same and what is different, so they learn to adjust it with what they know.