I had 3 years of Spanish in high school, more in college, but I still couldn't SPEAK it, much less understand it when I visited Spain. Speaking German had 'pushed' it out of my hear. I COULD read it. It took 2 weeks of very concertrated listening before I could HEAR it! Now I'm not saying this was the fault of my HS or college -BUT both concentrated on reading and taking written tests, not on speaking. I hope that has changed. My DGD has had MUCH better training it Italian - enough so that when she and DD visited Italy a year or so ago - she wowed DD with her speaking!