Hello Catherine, if you can get watch2gether.com where you are. You and your language partner can watch the same thing together and talk about it on chat. Alternatively, TED.com has videos with transcript. If you use TED ,I would suggest watching it first to see what you understand and then read the transcript to check - there are some short videos here https://www.ted.com/playlists/81/ted_in_3_minutes Really you do need to speak with another person though, language is for communication. Hope this helps Bob

Youtube is a great place to practise your listening (I know it's blocked in China, but that doesn't seem to phase most Chinese people I speak to!). You could do what I sometimes do with German: watched a Youtube video and try to understand everything. Rewind bits of it and use a dictionary if you need to to understand it, but don't use subtitles. If there are parts you can't understand parts of it, ask about it here. You could say something like: "I'm watching this video (provide a link) and I'm struggling to understand a word at 5 minutes 23 seconds)". This is a great way to improve your listening. You could do a similar thing with TV shows or movies, but that means we probably won't be able to watch the same thing if you ask about it on here.

It is very difficult to improve speaking ability without either a language partner, a teacher, or a classroom. You can take your writing, reading, and (to a lesser degree) listening skills to a fairly high level without ever talking to a native speaker in real time, but I don't know of any way to get really good at speaking totally on your own. In my experience, speaking is the most difficult of the four skills to master -- even with conversation partners. My advice is to keep trying to find language partners via iTalki, or whatever platform you prefer. It is a little like dating, you won't "click" with 4 out of 5 people but the fifth one may take you very far. I hope this helps!