When I was in highschool, I took french II. I had a buddy that lived in france until age 7, iirc. He couldn’t decifer one sentence of my french homework. He said it was completely different than “real” french.
In HS I took French I,II, and III. My French speaking friends were Haitian. They helped us with our French and we helped them with their English. They mastered English long before most of us even had the basics of French down.
English, French, and Spanish classes were really fun because of the Spanish speaking Cubans and South Americans and the French speaking Haitians along with us English speaking Americans.
Cramming 10 years of language into 4 years was interesting — a 6th year of English was an option, but 5 years of English and foreign languages were mandatory and our only choices for a 2nd language were Spanish or Latin, 3 years of French were mandatory.
I actually took Swedish in HS. (Minnesota)
I can still say “I have a red pen in the lake”.