I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it’s all totally gone from my brain.
My mother’s native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.
The point of language class in school is to assign grades, not to teach you. We know how humans acquire new languages: immersion. Listen to music in Spanish, watch Spanish shows, etc. but also need lots of practice actually communicating in Spanish with other Spanish speakers. It’s really hard to do unless you up and move to a different country where they primarily speak Spanish.
In the United States it isn’t hard to find Spanish speakers to practice with.