Unfortunately for many intellectuals, languages are not like academic subjects. That’s why learning them usually doesn’t follow the same “sit down and listen” approach so prevalent in much of traditional schooling.
A language isn’t something that a person does, the way you would do science or math. Instead, it’s something that “happens” – an experience – between people. When individuals experience the world by themselves, it’s called perception; when they experience the world together, it’s called language.
To learn a language, you’ll have to join with people and experience it. Sure, you can sit in your room with your language tutorial software and stock up on elements of the language in your arsenal, but at some point, you will have to go out into the world to use it to truly integrate them into your set of skills. Don’t let that scare you, though. Communing with people doesn’t have to mean jumping in to foreign streets and trying to strike up a conversation with everyone that passes by.
When you sit with a speaker of the language in a room and you attempt to make out what they’re saying, you’re experiencing the language together. When your tutor points at items in a room and you tell them what that thing is in the target language, that already falls in line with that. There is a ton of value to be gained from preset lessons (such as those in a classroom or a language software). However, there are elements of language learning it just doesn’t satisfy that only communing with other people can.