When you go to a country where everyone speaks the language you studied for years, why can a small child speak way better than you? Or maybe you thought that fairy tales and other books that are written for children should be easy to understand. Well, they are easy for native speaker children. Why are they so surprisingly hard for people learning a foreign language?
When a baby is born, it doesn’t know how to speak. Despite that, its parents and caretakers talk to it constantly, in a conversation-like manner, expecting the baby to respond eventually. The baby gets a lot of input, and starts understanding a little. The input that people provide is supportive, at the right level, used in the context of what’s happening, and directed toward the infant. After about a year, the baby starts to speak. By the time a child is 3 or 4, they become fluent.
So, if you had 4 years of French (or whatever foreign language) in school, why is that not comparable? Let’s do the math.
Let’s say you get 45 minutes of the target language a day, 180 school days a year. I won’t bother to remove days for standardized testing, assemblies, field trips, etc.
180 x 45 = 8,100 minutes/year 4 years = 32,400 minutes.
Now, about that small child. A six-month-old and a 2-year-old get about 14 hours a sleep out of the 24 hours in a day, and a 4-year old needs closer to 12. So that leaves about 10 hours a day awake; let’s say they’re getting 8 hours of linguistic input a day. But they get it 365 days a year.
8 hours/day x 60 minutes = 480 minutes/day
365 x 480 = 175,200 minutes/year - so even in the first year, an infant got 5.4 times more minutes of input than you did in 4 years
175,200 x 4 years = 700,800 minutes
700,800 / 32,400 = 21.6 times as many minutes of input in 4 years.
A student who takes French 4 Honors, or even French AP at the end of high school and even a college student taking French can find materials written for native speaker children (fairy tales, comic books, etc.) difficult. You need a lot more input. Also, school tends to concentrate on vocabulary for the classroom and literature, rather than fairy tales or real life.
But don't get discouraged! The best thing to do, of course, is to go to a target-language country for months, especially if you can stay in a supportive environment, such as a family. But there are other things you can do:
do your homework (not included in the estimate; hopefully that’s a motivating factor, especially if it’s listening)
use online language applications
read, sing songs, watch films and online videos in the target language: try to find things just a little above your current level
find a club, store, or other environment in which to get more input (not the same as “practicing”)
look for a language exchange partner - in real life, or online (see the post You Need a Sympathetic Listener)
Bonne chance !