[ghaff]

I had 4 years of high school French and could read passably, write some, but was never really conversational. Probably if I had lived in France for a summer I'd have gotten a lot better.

I was actually talking with a (French and English-speaking) friend who now lives in Serbia and they were saying they pretty much just picked Serbian up and didn't sweat all the fancy verb conjugations and so forth.

[besofrrn]

I had four years of high school French and one year at university, and I was pretty conversational. How much did you use the language outside of class? A bunch of us high school French students would speak with each other outside of class, even just to make silly jokes in the language, which helped with retention.

[ghaff]

>How much did you use the language outside of class?

Not at all. Which I think was my basic point. It was a class. I had no plans to move to France. Or any particular plan for French to be integral to subsequent education or career objectives.