Absolutely not. I have lived abroad half of my life (sometimes with a language reasonably close to my mother tongue and sometimes very far)

Speaking is always easier. I can make my own speed and I never use an unkown word. Sometimes I have to be a bit creative how to explain things if I am lacking a word.

Following discussions is hard. People use words I don't know all the time. Slang, dialects, accents on top of that. And many of them just speak too fast. This can take many many years and might never disappear when certain speakers are involved.

News speakers or documentary movies might be a different story.

It isn't. It really isn't. :)

While it is a big part, and necessary if you actually want to talk to people, in terms of time spent it is much more important to get the vocabulary in and as much exposure to expressions of the language by competent users as possible.

That's why people recommend travelling to where a language one wants to learn is spoken; not because one must speak it there as well, but because one hears and reads it there everywhere.

As a person who speaks a second language I learned as an adult, I find this situation incredibly difficult to negotiate.

In my first language, I can get through almost any such situation by using humour. In my second language, at best, I can manage 'just one more time?' with a frowny face.

I often think - why wasn't I taught this skill in any language school I attended?

English is not one of the harder or more inconsistent languages in the world. It's one of the simpler and more consistent ones.

This is a general pattern with languages that go through a phase where they are learned by large numbers of adults.

Listened to any native English speakers lately? At least in the US, the native speakers mangle the language to a horrible extent.

Most foreigners with decent English are actually much better at "English" than most Americans.

Really good points on learning to speak before writing. Trying to learn japanese now, and I'm glad that someone told me to learn to speak it fluently before learning to write it.

I don't know, reading? Consuming content in its original language? These days you can talk to most people in English anyway.

>If you really need to learn the language (for work?) then find somebody who speaks it and arrange to meet them for coffee on a regular basis.

Either you both end up overdosing on caffeine, or you will never learn their language in your lifetime.

If you want to force yourself in a conversation where you weren't part of then why dont you learn mandarin? Just like they learnt English.

Either put in the efforts to learn a language or stop feeling the need to be part of every conversation. If they want you to be part of some conversation then they will speak English like you say they have been doing.

Surely this is just a consequence of that fact that the majority of the world's English speakers speak English as a second language. As a native English speaker you're constantly hearing people speak bad English, so you're naturally somewhat desensitized.

Please continue studying the language, it is frustrating hearing non-native speakers say this. Your bad grammar or foreign mind will always hinder how you can interact with the community you are in. English is pretty strange in this way, I feel the cultural part is so estranged from the language, the width of the english speaking community is just too vast. You can get by with much less english than in other languages IMHO.

Malay is my challange, going pretty well.

Oh dear. This is really not my experience. In the first couple of years I lived in the UK it was a huge pain making myself understood by the natives, until I finally managed to approximate the local accent. I was even very frustrated that nobody seemed to make an effort to meet me half-way, in my efforts to be understood. I would often have this experience, where I'd be speaking to someone and they'd stare at me with a blank face, seemingly just waiting for me to repeat myself in case they could understand me this time around.

Among non-native English speakers I think this experience is common. Conversely, I've been able to communicate just fine with non-native English speakers who had very thick accents and spoke only broken English, exactly because both parties in the conversation were patient and attentive.

In my Master's I had a tutor from Indonesia. For me he was like the best teacher ever and I felt he made everything crystal clear and helped me really understand some hairy concepts. Then I spoke to a British friend who complained she couldn't understand a word he was saying and she hated every minute of his class.

Sometimes I think native and non-native speakers of English really speak two different languages.

It works better in a speech, but not in a conversation. While non-native speakers are ramping up, it’s clearly visible where they are with their speaking skills, but if you want to come close to native speaking proficiency then speed should not be ignored.

I’m someone who loves seeing well written and hearing well spoken English. The standards I hold myself to are quite high.

However, I have never had a problem with people- native or foreign born- with less than perfect English communication skills.

Going down that route smacks of elitism, xenophobia and a hyper-normative mindset. The way you get good at standard English is by practice, which they are doing every day at work using the skills (technology) they have mastered. Some of my family are ESL and my place of birth (in the UK, for God’s sake) was and is looked down on for the dialect.

Is it really that hard to just ask someone to repeat or restate themselves?

This has to be the most counterproductive advice I've ever heard. You need to start speaking as soon as possible. There's no other trick to learning a language than forcing yourself to speak.

For some it's easier because they're less socially anxious. For others it will be more difficult. I was in the latter camp learning Danish. You have to make friends with your fear or you will forever be stuck in what many language learners refer to as a "quiet period". I was for a decade (!!!) If you don't start speaking you will forever have only an intellectual understanding of the language.

So speak. Please speak. Early and often. Babies sound things out early because they're trying to get a hold of it, the vocal contortions required.

I was confronted in Japan with the choice of putting my crappy Japanese into practice and being thought a jerk, or attempting to speak English to the locals and removing all doubt. I gained considerable facility with the Japanese language in those two weeks. Still not within spitting distance of fluent, but a whole lot better than I was when I boarded the plane.

My wife is learning Spanish right now because we are moving to Costa Rica. Her most used phrase is “de espacio, por favor” which means “slowly, please”. She’s able to understand much more of the language when folks slow down and annunciate clearly.

When I lived in Chile as a teen, I also asked people to do the same thing frequently until I became proficient. I still ask sometimes in other Spanish-speaking countries because their accent or dialect differs from what my ears are most used to.

Speaking slowly and clearly to anyone learning a language is incredibly useful and is not insulting in any way.

I know plenty of people who haven't "lived in English" before they're able to speak it. But I don't think English is much different than other languages in that the most effective way to learn it is to use it.

This applies to every language out there, English is certainly not an exception in this aspect.

The problem is that most people are not exposed to real-life English. It's either quite artificial language during classes or well spoken lines in movies. Words are spoken slower and clearer. Native speakers speak fast, use linking, colloquial language, multitude of idioms, phrasal verbs, and tons of stuff never ever touched during classes.