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What is your expection? Native proficiency is not attainable if you are an adult. Professional working proficiency is definitely possible through serious learning and practice. Some proficiency is better than nothing! If you plan to move to Mexico for retirement, even limited working proficiency will make a huge difference!
How can you measure your level on that scale?
Are you able to be an ILR 5 without having a perfect accent?
I think im an ILR 5 in english, but my accent sucks
Hey, accents are sweet! But seriously, accents aside, I've been teaching French adults conversational English for the last 13 years. I've noticed some very interesting things in that time--young students, esp. those who have spent some time in Anglophone countries as kids, do very well later in life, as if the few weeks or months they spent in England or the US, planted verbal seeds for future learning. The students I feel sorriest for, the ones who make the least progress, are forty-fifty-somethings whose ears have rarely or ever been exposed to the music of English (remember, unlike Finland or Portugal, ALL forms of TV, film, are voiced-over by French actors). Thus, a forty-fifty-something in France is nearly unteachable. Their brain has been hard-wired for French only. I draw a picture of an apple, I say "That's a fruit." I then draw a picture of a banana, and I say, "That's a fruit too!" BUT, I say, like languages, they are DIFFERENT! What an older French learner of English does is to create, what I call, and draw, a banapple. Their brains refuse to see two different languages as two separate entities or species. It's a bummer to realize this, both for the teacher and the student. I used to think I could teach anyone to speak English--I was wrong. The only consolation is that it's neither my nor the student's fault.
Even though I know that you can "learn" at any age, at which does it become harder to perfect it? Is there an age at which you can never get rid of the accent?
Has anyone had an experience learning a language at a later age? If so what age, and how bad is your accent?
The ability of learning a foreign language and getting rid of accent are two different things and have nothing to do with each other.
IMO, it's never too late to learn a foreign language.
Only very few (adult) learners will be able to get rid of their accents. However, having an accent does not prevent one from speaking a foreign language fluently.
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Late Foreign Language Learners
