Indeed I have a friend who went to the UK and had absolutely no experience in English beforehand. His English was so bad every time he said something he was creating a new meme unintentionally. His speaking skills now that he has lived for a few years in the UK are much more advanced than mine and I've studied the language seriously for several years.

Duolingo is good way of aquiring some basic skills in most western language, and you also have Rosetta Stone. You can probably download it from some torrent tracker, though its language packs take plenty of space on your HDD. I did kinda learn reading and speaking Russian to some degree by reading Russian books, so that's a way too.