I think this article accurately describes the state of affairs around language learning and language acquisition. "I went to Brazil without a word of Portuguese and came out speaking it. I studied French in a classroom for years and cannot hold a conversation in French today. This is not an unusual experience. It is the expected outcome, and it has been the expected outcome for as long as we have had formal language education." The issue, according to Shrey Shah, is that language learning asks, first, what can be measured, and teaches for that, and as a result, ultimately fails to support actual language acquisition. "Before reaching for what can be measured, it is worth asking what the user actually needs to do, and what stopped them from doing it before." The answer is almost never 'better test scores'. But how can we imagine a system of education without them? Can we imagine a learning application that doesn't work like that?
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