My experience with French is completely different. As I said before, I started learning French at the University, and after just one year of traditional learning, by my second year I had the opportunity to take an Erasmus grant. In contrast to many of my friends who went to England to improve their first foreign language, I decided to go to Toulouse, in the south of France.
My experience there was just remarkable in all aspects, both as a personal adventure, and as a language learning one. Learning a language can be just amazing, because you learn from every input you receive, whether watching TV, hanging around with friends, etc. My wife often tells me: “You are not studying English, you’re just watching the television” My response is that “The TV show is in English, so I'm learning English.”
Oops, I'm digressing—back to the topic. In my first month in France, I made the same mistake many Erasmus students make: I only associated with Spanish speaking people. You still learn something, because you sit for your classes which are taught in this foreign language and you are surrounded by it when going to the supermarket, etc., but your progress will be much slower.
Thankfully, after just a couple of months I had the good fortune to hit it off with a French guy. I spent a lot of time with a group of 5 or 6 Spanish friends, but this French guy was also with us all the time, and he was really patient and helpful, and my French got better very quickly. In just about half a year I felt really fluent in French—almost to the point that I almost forgot my ability to speak English (which in theory was my major foreign language)!
