I think this is where traditional forms of language education fail us. Depending on the language you’re learning and where you live, sometimes the classroom is the ONLY time you can speak that language. From my personal experience, we never really learned how to be conversational. We just learned the grammar rules and how to pass the tests. I learned Portuguese without using a taking a formal class, buying a language book, going to a Portuguese speaking country/finding native speakers. I learned from taking capoeira classes (where all the movements and musics are in Portuguese), listening to music, watching Brazilian shows and movies on Netflix, watching Portuguese speaking YouTubers talk about subjects I’m already well-versed in and using apps like HelloTalk where I can text native speakers and see how they talk.

Ironically, I learned Portuguese faster than I did Mandarin Chinese (and I LIVE in a Chinese speaking country). As a native English speaker, Portuguese is a much easier language to learn than Chinese, plus I studied Spanish in school, which is very similar to Portuguese. It shows that if have an interest in a language, you’ll be dedicated enough to learn it and learn it fairly quickly I may add.