In this study of German as a foreign language, formal classroom experience is compared with informal use of German outside the classroom focusing on three syntactic features: main clause word order (subject-verb-object, or SVO), topicalization (subject-verb inversion), and subordinate word order (subject-object-verb, or SOV). T tests and correlation analyses comparing written and oral data from 31 learners demonstrate that: (a) written and oral fluency diverge significantly for these three features; (b) formal and informal target language experience both correlate to fluency; (c) formal experience correlates most significantly to written fluency; and (d) learner orientation is closely related to both experience and fluency in several ways. This preliminary study underscores the quality of experience--consistent, interactive target language contact across multiple domains--as more significant for acquiring certain features than is quantity, or mere duration of target language exposure. (Contains 7 notes and 4 tables.)