Reading and writing are great, but speaking is where confidence is built. Learn how to practice effectively.
Speak before you feel ready
Speaking is a separate skill from reading and listening, and it only improves by being used. Waiting until your grammar is solid postpones the practice that would have made it solid.
The first conversations are uncomfortable for everyone. That discomfort drops away quickly, and it never drops away for people who keep postponing.
Talk to yourself
Narrating your day in your target language is free, needs no partner, and can be done anywhere. Describe what you are doing, what you plan to do, what you thought of something you read.
It surfaces gaps immediately: the moment you cannot say 'I would have taken the earlier train', you have found your next thing to learn.
Shadow native audio
Shadowing means playing a short clip and speaking along a beat behind the speaker, copying rhythm and intonation rather than translating. It trains the mouth and ear together and does more for accent than isolated pronunciation drills.
Use a few seconds of material at a time and repeat it until it feels automatic. Perfect imitation of ten seconds is worth more than a rough pass through ten minutes.
Record yourself
Almost nobody enjoys this, and almost everybody who does it improves. Recording turns vague self-criticism into specific, fixable observations.
Keep the recordings. Comparing a clip from three months ago with one from today is the clearest evidence of progress you will get.
Build phrases, not just words
Fluent speech leans heavily on chunks: 'do you mind if…', 'it depends on…', 'I was about to…'. Storing whole phrases means you retrieve them as single units instead of assembling them word by word under pressure.
Collect the chunks you personally reach for most often in your own language, and learn those first.