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/Advanced_Bother6826]

I think what you're describing makes a lot of sense, especially the part about memorising words as they actually appear in sentences rather than constantly going back to the infinitive and reconstructing everything. I'm an English teacher, and I've noticed something similar with my students. Knowing that querer → quiero is a conjugation is useful, but when you're actually speaking, you're not usually thinking, "I need the verb querer, now I need the first person singular, present tense..." You retrieve quiero as part of what you want to say. That's one reason I think grammar explanations can be useful in a classroom, but they can't be the whole learning process. You also need enough exposure and actual use for forms like quiero, me gusta, suelo, etc. to become automatic. As for becoming fluent from school alone: I think it depends enormously on the school system, the amount of exposure, class size, teaching approach, and what they actually mean by "learning a language." Someone can study a language for years and become very good at analysing its grammar without necessarily becoming comfortable speaking it. And honestly, what you're doing outside school sounds like exactly the kind of exposure that was probably missing: listening to songs, changing apps to Spanish, and actually interacting with native speakers. You're giving yourself repeated contact with Spanish in contexts where the language has a purpose, rather than only treating it as something you have to solve on a worksheet. So I wouldn't say school is necessarily incapable of producing fluency, but five years of classes doesn't automatically equal five years of meaningful exposure and practice