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Proficient spoken French (not necessarily correct but usable) is perfectly attainable in an academic year for a native speaker of English. I watched students at my alma mater, which has a summer language program, go from nothing to conversational fluency in a nine-week intensive course. They still made lots of mistakes, but they could freely interact with native speakers and make themselves understood on most topics.

I get that gender especially is hard on learners coming to French from English, but you also get about a quarter of the vocabulary for free, which is a treat.