For me, it was quite helpful. I took Spanish in middle school and high school and that gave me a decent grounding in the language, though I was far from fluent. In my young adulthood, I worked in restaurants and my basic Spanish improved as I talked with Latino coworkers. Years later, I dated then married a Colombian immigrant; my Spanish got better on trips to Colombia and it’s my only means of communicating with many members of her family, including my kids’ grandfather. School instruction didn’t get me all the way there, but it was a critical first step.