The biggest problem I've had learning basic language skills is people talk back to you and they don't typically say what's in the learning material. I've kind of made it seem like I understand if I speak the language and I kind of feel like an idiot looking back at them with a blank face when they speak it back to me. But I sucked in school with languages and chose to learn a dead one to get the language credit to graduate.
As someone from english Canada, our french second language courses wre the bare minimum that you can consider as a language course up until grade 10. It is the same concepts year after year, and you are left with nothing to show for it