Learn pronunciation first as described in this article. This used to be impossible with Papiamentu unless you had face-to-face access to native speakers. But in recent years many radio stations have become available through internet streaming and many songs and interviews have been posted on YouTube. Good models of speech are available now.
If you don’t learn correct pronunciation at the start you’ll have trouble keeping similar words correctly separated in your memory. Also you will have to put a lot of energy into correcting your pronunciation later.
Study sentences rather than isolated words. Study sentences doesn’t mean memorize sentences— it means savor, ponder, and reflect on sentences. By letting our attention linger on complete sentences we pick up the nuances of words and we learn the phrases in which they most commonly occur. Check out this thread on Reddit. (And here’s a backup copy of that thread.)
The purpose of this blog is to provide extra material and links to useful audio, video or text to anyone is who is trying to learn Papiamento / Papiamentu. I focus on the Curacao and Bonaire form of the language rather than the Aruba form. The two writing systems (orthographies) are very different and it makes sense for a student to focus on one or the other.