> and most classrooms (I know there are exceptional curriculums and exceptional students) don't prepare you to actually speak to people

Is this really how language lessons are taught in US high schools? I've learned English and French in high school, and we were forced to speak all the time.

* Read a story together (who's reading aloud is frequently switched), then the teacher asks questions about the story and picks students to answer. The student answers, if there's errors the teacher fixes them, and the student repeats the corrected answer.

* When you learn new grammar, the teacher starts a sentence, and a student has to finish it using the new grammatical structure (or similar exercises). This was followed by homework, where all those exercises happened again, in writing.

By year 3, we also did lots of essay-style writing, which is where you really drill down into learning the language. Essays were graded and discussed.

In my opinion, this is the best (and also most expensive) way to thoroughly learn a language, it can only really be improved by cutting down the size of the class to ideally 2-3 students - which, of course, makes it even more expensive.

We did do those kinds of things. For example, speaking with a partner or having to give a 5 minute talk to the teacher on something.

The problem is that it's grossly inefficient time-wise, and the content of "conversations" was always very, very simple. "Hi my name is _, I like the color _, My hometown is in _, how are you today?" Is not a real conversation. It's boring and most students learn the vocab for the upcoming chapter's test, then forget it after.

I'll concede that with 3 semesters of German, were I to pick it up again, I would probably do so pretty quickly given that the teachers paid a lot of attention to our essays.

It's probable that small classes would help because the teacher could then be more of a private tutor. But with 20-30 size classes, only really motivated students who already study/watch media outside of school will excel. So it's kind of redundant in my opinion.

Diligent self-study with attending a language exchange or another environment to speak/practice the language will yield much greater results much faster. You can study the same textbooks at your own pace, you can find additional material and study groups, and you can hire a tutor at times to fill in gaps.

I think if you're a college student it's fine since you have to pick a class anyway (I had to take 3 semesters of any language), but as an adult where time is significantly more precious, I can't recommend it. In a sibling comment I went over what I do use.

> "Hi my name is _, I like the color _, My hometown is in _, how are you today?" Is not a real conversation.

That's... "first two weeks"-level of language lessons, right? No reason not to progress to children's stories and newspaper articles in time.

We basically never did speaking with a partner, I think our teachers realized that most students will learn little from that. It was always student teacher interactions, but in a way that required everybody to pay attention/participate. The teacher would ask a question, waited a few seconds so everybody could begin forming a response, and then pick a student to answer.

Not listening and mentally preparing an answer risked getting picked, failing, and getting admonished/ridiculed - and the teachers were (naturally) pretty good at calling on students who had drifted off. If you were paying attention, you also constantly compared your prepared response with what other students were answering, which made you think about correct grammar, ect.

I think if you have the resources to do 5 hours of language lessons a week, this is the best way. If you're learning independently, your way is probably more effective in terms of time and money. I've saved your other comment, I really should get back into Spanish...

In my four years of US high school Spanish in South Florida, I don't recall a single time we read complete stories or newspaper articles. It was entirely grammar and vocabulary in isolation. When there was speaking exercises the teachers did not make an effort to have the native speakers speak with the non-native speakers.

The only thing close to what I'd now call "Compelling Comprehensive Input" that I recall is a single week where we watched a Friends-style miniseries about an English speaker moving to Spain.

You would not be surprised ik spreek geen spaans.

> That's... "first two weeks"-level of language lessons, right? No reason not to progress to children's stories and newspaper articles in time.

After trying for years to learn my wife’s native language, I haven’t really gotten past the “my name is _” and a few other key phrases. I’ve got maybe 10 phrases memorized and I think that’s all my brain can hold at this point. Language learning is not for everyone.

> Language learning is not for everyone.

That's certainly true, but there's probably another effect at play here: language learning is extremely time intensive, and you don't progress if you're not practicing a minimum amount of hours per month - you even lose progress again.

You probably could break through to hundreds of phrases with spaced repetition software and "only" a concentrated effort of a few dozen hours. But, yes, this requires almost daily practice. And then later, many hours of maintenance effort.

Every human learns a language from birth; there's no inherent reason why learning a second one "can't be for everyone".

The thing is that it requires a lot of time and studying. At least 30 mins per day is the bare minimum, but 1-3 is much better for results.

I don't personally feel like language learning is easier for me than other people. I just focused on putting the time and studying in diligently over many years.

> It's probable that small classes would help because the teacher could then be more of a private tutor. But with 20-30 size classes, only really motivated students who already study/watch media outside of school will excel. So it's kind of redundant in my opinion.

Yup. Motivated students learn the language in the classroom (+ self-study) just fine. Unmotivated students don't, but they are not motivated anyway.

That's interesting to me. From my perspective, I didn't find Duolingo great, but it did give me some vocab and basic sentences, and left me feeling more competent than I actually ended up being once I was living where they speak the language I was learning.

Since then I did classes on-again, off-again and I can really feel my ability ramping up when I'm doing them, to the point where I was having short conversations in that second language. When I'm not doing classes, I'm still reinforcing things through my surroundings but I definitely feel that I plateau and don't really get much better.

However, the classes did get me to a point where now I can do things like play D&D in my second language. I still don't feel fluent (I have to active-listen the whole time which is tiring, and sometimes mentally translate still, though that's improving) but I am pretty conversational, and the classes definitely made a big difference for me.

Perhaps it's that there are classes and then there are classes, and you've had bad luck with the quality or nature of yours?

> neither should really be looked towards for substantial language learning methods

What should one do instead?

internet_points posted good advice a comment or two above. Duolingo _is_ ok as a starting point, but (as was said before), move on as soon as possible. As a poster above did, I also spent way way too long on Duolingo, chasing the 'streak'. And got nowhere. I already had a foundation when I started, but I got no farther in a year or more of daily Duo. All progress stopped. When I finally switched to graded input instead, and deleted everything Duo from my devices, things finally picked up again. I could have used the time I wasted on Duo to get input instead, it's something which actually works (when the input is compelling and something which can be mostly understood).

I can only tell you what worked for me: it's input. Read. Start using any brute-force method to learn the basics, like the 100 most common words. Then start reading stories aimed at toddlers (or especially written for language learners, there are apps), and keep going to more complex input as you progress.

Do not worry about grammar; you will learn it intuitively as you move from simple sentences to more complex blocks of text. Do not worry about learning word lists after you have the basics; learn words in the context of the text you're reading.

(I have no qualifications besides being a self-taught English and Chinese speaker, so take my input for what it's worth.)

There is no one magic solution. Every person I know who has learned a language to an advanced degree has used a variety of methods, diligently, over a long period of time, depending on their current needs. I can give a brief overview of some tools that I find to be efficient in terms of time and payoff, in no particular order.

1. SRS - Spaced Repetition Software, for flashcards. Anki is the gold standard. It's open source and free on every pc/android/etc except iphone where it's $20 I think. I recommend finding a good starting deck with about 3k to 6k words to help build your core vocabulary. In my case it was "Evita's 5k Korean". For about 6-8 months I grinded 20 new words per day, which means about 30-50 minutes of Anki depending on if you missed a day or not and thus had a backlog. If you have less time I recommend 5 or 10 new words per day.

2. Find trusted resources for grammar and structured learning. You might have to hunt around but for Korean, I found some excellent websites, Youtubers, and textbooks like Korean Grammar in Use I-III. These materials really are the core of your studying. Vocab doesn't help much if you don't know grammar and you certainly can't say anything without vocab. These are how you get to output, i.e. writing and speaking correctly.

3. Find graded readers if possible. Roughly, these are texts designed around 90% comprehension which is a sweetspot for learning new words naturally through context. Unfortunately at the time I couldnt find any for Korean, but I've watched friends use them for e.g. Mandarin Chinese and learn quite a lot of vocabulary in a short time.

4. Find someone who can correct your writing in some form. Whether that's a private tutor or a friend who's native language is your target language and their target language is your native language. In the past I found some dedicated learners through HelloTalk who would trade journal entries with me. I would correct their English and they would correct my Korean. It goes without saying that you need to practice output in your target language when possible, both in writing and in speech.

5. Find a good language exchange and/or friends who speak your target language. By good, I mean a structured language exchange that enforces pairings and language usage. In Seoul I find that most "language exchanges" are excuses to drink and and chat, mostly in English. There was one language exchange that 1:1 Korean language-only pairings for 1 hour, then I repaid that with 2-3 30minute pairings of 2-3 people in English. This is where you put your textbook/solo studies to practice by actually speaking (and hopefully getting corrections). Eventually I hit a plateau and got tired of having similar conversations, plus paying $10 per event. I also found a few lifelong friends who are studying English and thus we can ping each other for random questions.

6. Find some spaces or groups that are -only- in your target language. With the internet it's easier than ever now with Discord. For example, my friend learned a lot of French by hanging out in French speaking gaming servers on discord. There are also apps like Hilokal and HelloTalk, but I haven't used them in a while so I can't speak to their quality anymore. Lastly there are offline options depending on your area. In the US I used Meetup to find language groups and in Korea I use, well, a korean equivalent to find groups in niches I enjoy.

7. Lastly, and this isn't a tool, but "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus. In learning a language, you will make mistakes and you will say things that sound stupid. It's okay. It's unavoidable and you make good progress by learning from these mistakes, so long as you reflect on them and understand why the mistake occurred. The people who focus on being perfect and making zero mistakes in learning a language, in my experience, do not go very far.

These are some great tips. Having consistent daily exposure to your target language I think is important. Compelling graded readers can make spending that time every day enjoyable and not feel like a chore. A stress-free positive learning environment helps quite a bit with the subconscious process of language acquisition; it's what Krashen calls the "Affective Filter Hypothesis".