Peter Sather

I prefer to individualize my lessons based on my students strengths; everyone learns differently. Some students prefer to view language analytically, as if it is a puzzle and learn best by finding individual units of a language and equating them to units of thought in their mother tongue. With these students we'd typically focus on grammar and structure while emphasizing modal verbs, regular conjugations, and coordinating conjunctions. Some students prefer to view language using critical thinking. These students respond best to higher volumes of subject matter, which makes reading or multimedia a better source than analyzing parts of speech.
It is important to note that within both styles of thought process there are different styles of learning, namely visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. I encourage all of my students to make flashcards to build their bank of words and to repeat those words each time; this creates a scenario in which students have the opportunity to see words many times over and commit them to their memory bank and it tends to work for any style of learning—the creation of the flashcards provides the opportunity for kinesthetic learners to create something; auditory learners get the change to hear the words over and over again, and visual learners have a visual frame of reference to recall.
While memorizing words and grammar structures is important, I believe the most important aspect of language apprehension is losing one's sense of shame. You have to be open to sounding silly when learning a language, and the truth of the matter is that most native speakers of your target language will be happy that you're making the effort and willing to help as much as possible.