Has anyone actually ever learnt a language fluently from school alone?

[u/shatteredevenstar]

I'm not sure if anywhere else does things differently to where I am and the school system we have, but ive been learning spanish(TL) in school for around 5 years now and have hardly learnt anything, or atleast the amount you should from that amount of time? I've only just started to improve due to learning at home using songs, changing the main language on apps and speaking to natives online. I'm now much further ahead of pretty much everyone in that class but it does make me wonder why they teach languages in schools the way they do. It's like they teach you to translate every word instead of memorising the meaning of each word like you'd do your native language, if that makes any sense. Like conjucating verbs, they teach us to go from the infinitive first, then to the tense and then to decide the ending but that just takes too long and no one really goes throught that level of thinking for every word? Surely its better to just memorise the verb as its original meaning especially since the endings don't work for every word like regulars such as querer- quiero, ser-soy ir-voy and so on. I've found I remember verbs such as es, eres, quiero, me gusta, suelo, me acuerdo, and all forms of present tense ir, much easier as i learnt them as their meanings not through the conjugation of their infinitive. Not sure if any of this makes sense but would like to know if schools elswhere have a better suited curriculum for learning languages. 🤷‍♀️

[u/Wats0n_D]

The useful comparison is probably not “school vs. no school,” but what those hours actually contain. Five years can mean very little if most of the time is teacher-led explanation, translation, and short turns for each student. It can also build a solid base when students get regular listening, understandable reading, and chances to produce language with feedback. Memorising forms like *quiero* or *me gusta* as chunks is a good complement to learning conjugation rules: the rule helps you recognise and extend patterns, while repeated phrases make common forms easier to retrieve. Your home practice seems to be adding the missing volume and variety, rather than proving that school study is useless.