einzelne wrote:Besides nothing stops you from asking a native speaker: "Wie sagt man das auf Deutsch?" when you don't know how to express something naturally or idiomatically. Just make sure to write it down, so you won't forget it. It's the best way to develop fluency, since we all have our own idiosyncratic ways of speaking.
I totally agree with this and the several observations about it are that:
1) It gets multiple repetitions of the standard patterns.
2) You find out that not everyone says the same things in the same way.
3) You get embroiled in conversations you can manage and signal your current position to the person.
I'm totally sympathetic to the difficulty of transferring into active, real speaking. We've all suffered with it and there's a bump to get over at a certain point which is less to do with your actual knowledge and more to do with learning how to apply it. Speaking a language really is a doing thing like swimming or riding a bicycle, where you have to get the 'knack'.