If you go into a store and want to buy something, you gotta make the effort to figure out how to ask for what it is you want.  Sometimes that leads to strange foods landing in your market basket, but, hey, that's life.  And, in doing so, one has to set aside ego and pride and be willing to ask "how does one say [whatever]", or make clear they don't understand, but would like to and can the other person please help.

Other good ways of really making the effort to understand and learn:

• go to the movies to see movies you've already seen in English, dubbed over into the foreign language.  You already know the dialogue.  Listening to how it's translated into collquial speech and how the actors' body language relates to what is said is priceless.  Same for TV - Star Trek, Sesame Street, etc. are all translated into foreign languages and shown over there.
  
• get a good translation dictionary and, when you hear/see a new word, look it up.
  
• watch sports (especially those you understand - for me, it was hockey)on TV with someone who will take the time to explain what the announcer is saying, if you don't get it immediately.
  
• get a girlfriend/boyfriend who speaks a little English.  You'll both want to communicate, so there's a lot of incentive to learn.
  
• recognize that people all over the world are pretty much the same.  They all want a warm, dry place to sleep, a peaceable neighborhood where everyone at least minds their own business (if not actively gets along)and stays on their side of the fence, to get laid, to eat (favorite foods) until full, to have their kids behave, stay out of the hands of the police, succeed in school, and have happy lives, to have their favorite sports teams win, to get paid appropriately for their work and not be ripped off in the stores, and to cuss out their politicians.  Recognizing language is a tool, a means to those goals, allows one to derive from context what the person is likely saying and go back (by asking questions as need be) to fill in the blanks in understanding.