Why I'm not fluent in German even after learning for 5 years.
Welcome to the first post I've made about learning languages. I'm Atila.
I've been learning German for a shockingly long time. I should be fluent by now.
I'm not. Simply due to the low amount of actual input I have received (Only 78 hours). I first heard of immersion methods from watching a Matt vs Japan video. I've dabbled 3 times in learning Japanese but never actually did anything of substance only really Anki. I've been immersing on and off since June 2022 and been doing Anki since August 2021 (however most of the cards from that time have been deleted).
I've been learning German for 5 years in the education system and I still am. Due to very little immersion learning other than free-flow listening and reading subtitled anime and a lot of Anki for the actually important last 2 years of my studies, my grades in German jumped from a Grade 2(equivalent to an F or E) to a Grade 9 (equivalent to an A*).
While I believe that going to school and learning German for 5 years was a very helpful base as it meant that a large majority of sentences where 1T when I did start immersing. Traditional Classroom learning is quite slow compared to the time sunk in.
All in all, the takeaway should be Just Immerse.