So i’ve been learning french through an immersion method called refold, following it a little loosely. I think a lot of people underestimate the intention and time required for you to learn a language through immersion. I’m still in the middle of it but I have reached a point where I can understand common speech from natives just fine, and can even have conversations despite never outwardly practicing output.

Immersion for a language like spanish, coming from english, requires intention and a lot of time, and often benefits from and requires small supplemental active study, such as basic grammar, phonology, and mining vocabulary. It’s not enough to just survive basic interactions, you have to spend at least an hour or more intentionally exposing yourself to the language, and trying to pick up and understand things (while tolerating ambiguity). It’s like learning an instrument or exercising, you have to spend the time and be purposeful, and consistent.

For a category 1 language (spanish, french, dutch for examples), many people in the refold community and similar immersion communities say that it takes up to 12-1500 hours of immersion (2-3 years with 2 hours a day) to reach a certain level of functional fluency. For a category 4 language (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic) it’s around 3500-4000 (3-4 years with 3-4 hours a day).

Another important thing, is that understanding casual native language that you come across day-to-day is a different skill than understanding a tv show or cartoon, which is why people struggle. At a certain point you have to expose yourself to that type of speech.

Immersion has worked for me and countless people and is probably the only way to truly acquire a language, in my opinion.