I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it's all totally gone from my brain.
My mother's native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.
I've had good experiences with it, personally. I'm learning Mandarin with a language partner I found on an app and it was very helpful, especially on the pronunciation part.
Yeah duh it won't flow, because you're not fluent. It's gonna be stilted and unnatural conversations for a while, you gotta be disciplined there.