As I mentioned I am of the opinion that a fairly well educated person ( you need study skills/ cultural curiosity) who actively is learning the language ( Spanish) will take around 6 to 7 years to develop a good level. Just expecting to pick it up after 6 years won't happen and is just a myth( you don't learn just having Spanish TV on all day or asking for a bag in the supermarket) . You need to actively pursue it.
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My own personal experience in language learning is I am 61 years old and have been taking weekly Spanish lessons for 2 years 9 months in the UK with the same teacher, i am no where near the level where I want to be, my problem is class progress, our numbers dwindled so our improvers class 2 was cancelled and our only option was to rejoin improvers 1 again so going over the same course content again which some parts are good to revisit and refresh, I feel as if I will never progress any further with this class and these numbers are now dwindling also so this class will probably be cancelled, there is not a big choice of language classes in my area unfortunately, I also learn on line with James Spanish School which has accelerated my progress and without this I would probably of given up on my language learning journey, im currently in a dilemma what to do when class resumes in January.

Your experience mirrors mine. I started taking group lessons in Spain but like yourself new people would join and we would go over the same things again. Also people would join the group who were at a higher level of spanish than rest of the group. In Spanish discussion they would hog the conversation showing off their very good level of spoken spanish. Yes it made them look good but did nothing for rest of the course. I too have gone the online James Spanish School route and find I am learning more than I did in class. It has a good structure of progress which the free online YouTube lessons don't really have.

I also follow a few TikTok pages and a Facebook Spanish group which has been beneficial as you can ask questions and native Spanish speakers will advise or correct you, one thing which has really worked for me is a flash card app called Quizlet, I make my own sets to revise or learn new words or sentences, I can play it through while I’m driving in the car in audio mode, it is a very good learning tool 👍

For those learning Spanish I came across this App which I find very good. It let's you practice sentences by either writing them or speaking them. It is well worth playing around with to learn it's various options. It is very well put together and follows a logical process to progress with explanations of new subject matter etc. You can use basics for free but to purchase full app is relatively inexpensive. I thought I would put it on here as I find it useful and not boring which many apps are. I have no connection with this app other than being a user that finds it useful.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...go.spanishdemo
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