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.
I think they should do language classes in elementary. Your mind holds on to those far better. I had mine as electives in High School and it was brutal. My mind doesn’t work that way and I really tried. We did end up going to Mexico for a month and it only cost the families $800. One of the best experiences of my life.
Unfortunately it was 20 something years ago and I barely remember things. I have some reading comprehension and some very basic conversational spanish but not much remains to be fluent at all.
Look into comprehensible input, go to the Dreaming Spanish youtube channel and start from the super beginner playlist (or whatever it’s called)