Your ultimate goal is to interact comfortably with native speakers. At an early stage you will want to try out what you have learned in order to build up your confidence and fluency. But conversation and speaking skills develop gradually and cannot be rushed. Do not be in a hurry or put pressure on yourself. Do not worry about how you sound, just focus on communicating. You will often feel that you are struggling, when in fact you are communicating quite successfully. The key to successful conversation is to try to relax and enjoy the experience. Focus on the meaning you are trying to communicate, not on how well you are doing. Do not think that your grammar and pronunciation are being judged, just try to get your meaning across. Your listeners want to understand you. When you are successful in communicating, give yourself a pat on the back.
Use the phrases you know and build your conversation around these phrases. If possible you should make weekly lists of new words and phrases from your learning and deliberately try to use them. You will find that you can use your newly learned phrases as convenient components and build your conversation around them. Using them in conversation will also help you confirm that you really know how to use them. Your ability to express yourself will improve as you continue your intensive listening, reading, vocabulary learning, pronunciation and writing activities.
You will need to make an effort to find people to talk with. If you live where the language is spoken, you may have friends or co-workers who are native speakers. You may be able to enroll in courses offered in the language you are learning, but on subjects other than the language itself. This and other activities can bring you into casual and friendly contact with native speakers who share your interests. If you do not have ready opportunities to meet native speakers, you will have to organize small groups of learners with or without native speaker coaches to meet and discuss subjects of common interest.
You can use the Internet to organize meetings at sites such as The Linguist. There you can connect with native speakers, and other language learners. You can arrange meetings, voice-chat sessions, lessons or other events on subjects of interest with people all over the world. These encounters are for interaction, feedback and stimulus. They should be enjoyable and not stressful. They can vary from serious forums on current affairs, business or academic subjects, to more relaxed social exchanges.
A formal language school can also offer excellent interaction and feedback, but one word of caution is necessary. Too many people think that simply attending language school will enable them to learn a language. In fact, whether you are attending formal classes or not, you will do most of your learning on your own. You direct your own listening and reading activity. You work on learning and relearning words and phrases, you train yourself to pronounce correctly, and you work on your writing. When you choose the activity that suits your mood, your studies are more intense than when you are forced to follow the teacher's agenda.
