Despite persistent efforts, most learners of a second language will never become fully native-like in it, although with practice considerable fluency can be achieved.

Despite fluency in Japanese, he refused to use the language to interact with local Taiwanese elites, many of whom could not speak Mandarin, believing that the island must abandon the colonial language in favor of the new national tongue.

Despite extensive oil and gas resources, diamonds, hydroelectric potential, and rich agricultural land, Angola remains poor, and a third of the population relies on subsistence agriculture.

Despite progress since the Soviet era, the unemployment rate still hovers near 30 % and there remains a huge gulf between actual and potential Gross Domestic Product.

Despite its rapid growth, the economy of Benin still remains underdeveloped and dependent on subsistence agriculture, cotton production, and regional trade.

Despite fox hunting being banned by the Hunting Act in 2004, Boxing Day remains the biggest hunt of the year for most hunts in the UK by use of scent drag trails instead of live quarry.

Despite movement toward democratic reform, power remains in the hands of a northern ethnic oligarchy.

Despite its difficulty of learning, this method remains popular in Chinese communities that use traditional Chinese characters, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan ; it is also the first method that allowed users to enter more than a hundred Chinese characters per minute.

Despite this, Cadbury remains widely associated with Camelot.

Despite this competition, D & D remains a market leader in the role-playing game industry.

Despite these uncertainties, there is agreement that destruction of rainforests remains a significant environmental problem.

Despite recent improvements, with an exploding population Ethiopia remains one of the poorest nations in the world.

Despite the ape-like morphology of the bodies, H. habilis remains are often accompanied by primitive stone tools ( e. g. Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania and Lake Turkana, Kenya ).

Despite improvements in the laws in recent years, Indonesia's intellectual property rights regime remains weak ; lack of effective enforcement is a major concern.

Despite the Soviets ' possession of Hitler's remains, Stalin did not believe that his old nemesis was actually dead, a belief that remained for years after the war.

Despite his position as the most important Irish artist of the 20th century ( and the first to sell for over £ 1m ), he took no pupils and allowed no one to watch him work, so he remains a unique figure.

Despite decades of research, where these animals go for the rest of the year remains unknown.

Despite the recent war's divisions along ethnic lines, Liberia remains a multiethnic and multicultural country.

Despite this, it remains one of the most famous examples of cryptozoology.

Despite his success, Macbeth, also aware of this part of the prophecy, remains uneasy.

Despite improvements on the economy the Republic of Moldova remains Europe's poorest nation.

Despite extensive research into the interaction of modafinil with a large number of neurotransmitter systems, a precise mechanism or set of mechanisms of action remains unclear.

Despite this, substantial remains remain visible today and it continues to be a major tourist attraction.

Despite different labeling, the function remains the same — to provide additional power for amplification of the signal.

Despite this most recent power-stripping, the President remains the ex officio chair of the National Security Council, as per the National Security Act 2004.

Despite the similarity to its American counterpart in that the outcome of the matches remains predetermined, the phenomena are different in the form of the psychology and presentation of the sport ; it is treated as a full contact combat sport as it mixes hard hitting martial arts strikes with shoot style submission holds, while in the U. S. it is rather more regarded as an entertainment show.

Despite this association with the remains of a large carnivorous dinosaur, the vertebra shows no evidence that it was chewed on by the dinosaur.

Despite the differences, the Gorani language has been classified as part of the Kurdish language.

Despite the insistence of the US Office of Education that there was no money to fund the project, Howe persisted, and insisted the project be classified as a research project.

Despite this enormous quantity, the area's significance was often overlooked by scholarly publications and commercial journals, largely because very little of the wine being produced was classified under an appellation contrôlée until the 1980s ( Joseph 2005: 190 ).

Despite the name, Wood Village is classified as a city.

Despite this, in January 1535, Catholic authorities found those classified as " Lutherans " actually to be Zwinglians, followers of Huldrych Zwingli.

Despite the low death toll, over 180, 000 US veterans would later be classified as " permanently disabled " according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs ( National Gulf War Resource Center ; see also Gulf War Syndrome ).

Despite its great age, Sumerian can be safely classified as an isolate, as the language is well enough known that, if modern relatives existed, they would be recognizably related.

Despite the group being classified as waders, most species have a preference for arid or semi-arid habitats.

Despite the lack of a cell wall, many taxonomists have classified Mycoplasma and relatives in the phylum Firmicutes, consisting of low G + C Gram-positive bacteria such as Clostridium, Lactobacillus, and Streptococcus based on 16S rRNA gene analysis.

Despite the encouraging degree of success so far, the Numbat remains at considerable risk of extinction and is classified as an endangered species.

Despite being the most numerous species of flamingo, it is classified as near-threatened due to its declining population and the low number of breeding sites, some of which are threatened by human activities.

Despite this, the ground was classified as national landmark in 1998, meaning that it could not be demolished.

Despite some positive reviews ( and a loyal audience that might be classified as a cult following, based on Crosby's claim the network received more requests from fans for Quiet, Please!

Despite frequent calls for its release, the Henderson-Brooks report still remains classified.

Despite the destruction of the stage, the mission was classified as a success, having achieved all of its primary objectives and validating the design concept of the restartable dash-500 version.

Despite large quantities of classified material produced by the IC, the amount of classified information produced on any one topic can be quite limited, and may be taken out of context if viewed only from a classified-source perspective.

Despite having poor eyesight and being classified 4-F ( unfit ), he also became a pilot and reportedly flew 89 combat missions by the time of his inactivation from the United States Army Air Forces ( USAAF ) in August 1945.

Despite being the most popular sporting model in Britain for most of its production life, the third generation Capri was also one of the most stolen cars in Britain during the 1980s and early 1990s, being classified as " high risk " of theft in a Home Office report.

Despite the oceanic-like thermal regimes, these areas are generally classified as mild steppe or desert climates.

Despite the establishment of several populations by the Department of Environment and Conservation, it is still classified as Endangered by the IUCN.

Despite the authors ' comments that the findings of the paper " do not imply that moral or legal definitions of or views on behaviors currently classified as CSA " should be changed, it caught the attention of, and was used by, advocates for pedophilia.

Despite the changeable condition, 16 cars finished the race with 17 classified.

Despite running out of fuel before the finish, the Williams-Honda of Keke Rosberg was classified 4th, followed by the Lotus-Renault of Elio de Angelis and the Toleman-Hart of Ayrton Senna.