Speaking a different language is like visiting another country. You have to get into the mindset of the foreigners to understand them and that doesn't mean only understanding language but also their culture and history. A good language teacher will teach you these as well. I am lucky that I am one of those people who learn new languages very easily and I adapt local dialects almost automaticly. After three weeks in another country I also start to think and dream in its native language. I don't know if your brain has to be "wired" for it or if it helps that you grow up around multiple languages from birth. But learning a new language first demands an open mind for other people and their customs. It also requires an amount of self confidence and courage. English has become a very easy language to learn. It's very informal, very unambiguous, globally distributed and its grammar is simple. And the english speaking community's history and culture is also easily understood because of its global reach. Spanish on the contrary is much weirder. It has a grammar that when you dig deeper into it it becomes very difficult (it has 4 or 5 different ways to address a past event). It can be very formal on one side and very sexual and scatological on the other. And although it's also globally distributed its speakers and spoken dialects differ enormously throughout the world. IMO latin american differs much more from native spanish than north american from native english. I think that's because the british never "assimilated" as well with local cultures as the spanish did.