I ended up majoring in Spanish in college. Started out as a Psych major, but changed when the going got tough. Had to take 6 quarters of foreign lang. anyway in Arts and Sciences, as well as 6 quarters of English.
For me, Spanish was the easiest subject, and it was fun. I pretty much majored in that just so I could graduate. Everything else was hard, though I did enjoy some of the math classes, I was not all that good at it. Ideal thing for me would have been to study architecture, but college physics wasn't my cup of tea.
Anyway, I discovered a couple things about language. I learned more about English in two years of foreign lang. than I had learned in all the english classes before college.
Another thing is, language is very closely associated with culture of the native speakers. Many of our preliminary Spanish courses emphasized history and culture as an integral part of understanding the language. In other words, you have to think in Spanish. You can't think in English.
This is why there is so much difficulty learning English, unless you've lived here all your life. Immigrants and exchange students are exposed to a divirsity of cultures here in the US. The primary two are Spanish and English here.
All peoples are proud of their language and culture that goes with it. The two are not seperable.
Bottom line is, to learn English you have to accept and learn about English culture. And, to an extent, you have to be "user friendly", meaning you have respect for it.
Les