Language Learning Through Speaking Practice
If you are looking for a non threatening venue where you can practice speaking your target language with other people in person, create for yourself an account on meetup.com. Search the site to see whether there are language meetups for the language you are interested in pursuing, in your city or nearby. I’ve used them to find meetups in different cities and states. The setting is usually a place such as a coffee shop. It really is nice to be able to get together with other like minded people and practice speaking. You never know what you'll learn. There might even be native speakers of the language you want to learn, as is often the case.
Many gatherings are intended to be informal, with a range of speakers. As a result, if you're a complete newbie, you may find yourself asking for a translation into your home language every 30 seconds since you're absolutely clueless. Alternatively, as an intermediate-advanced level speaker, you may either 1) become frustrated by the beginners, or 2) wind up teaching them for the day. It's an ego boost (wow, they stink much worse than I do!) but it doesn't help you achieve your goal of going. The idea, in my opinion, is to have a natural flow of dialogue about intriguing issues.
One of the best things about these events is that many native speakers seek out and attend them in order to keep their own fluency up to date, and they are patient with speakers of all levels.
It's also a good way to see if you can keep up with a competent speaker's pace in a conversation. It's not the same as conversing with a classmate who speaks slowly and pauses to search their minds for vocabulary and verb conjugations. It's also a fantastic way to learn about cultural clues that you wouldn't find in a textbook or even your greatest language learning program.
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