I counter your anecdote with mine: I first studied Spanish in college and became fluent in it, in large part thanks to my classroom studies. Yes, I got practic

I counter your anecdote with mine: I first studied Spanish in college and became fluent in it, in large part thanks to my classroom studies. Yes, I got practice with conversation partners and two studies abroad. But learning the vocabulary, drilling on the verb tenses, and doing the writing assignments prepared me to start parsing those real-world sentences into words I understood. When I understood 4 out of 5 words, or when I wanted to say something but didn't know a particular word, I would go back to the dictionary for the missing part. And when I heard a novel tense, like "que TENGAS un buen dia," I'd go back to my professor and ask about it. (That was subjunctive, generally used for hypothetical, doubtful, or wished-for circumstances.) I think that a combination of classroom and real-world learning is the best way to attain fluency.