Aha, maybe that's what I need to try.
I'm just disgusted with the fact that I took French from 4th grade through 11th and still can't make small talk with a cashier. In all that time they never got around to teaching us more than one and a half verb tenses, and the stupidest common everyday phrases trip me up, even though my vocabulary for other things is decent. They don't really teach kids and teens who are learning a language the practical things that an adult would need when on vacation or carrying out everyday tasks. How to do things at the bank, how to talk about rewards points and coupons in a store, how to understand the PA messages when there's a problem on the subway line. That kind of thing.