I feel the same about Spanish, I am a fan of Benny the Irish polyglot, and his concept on using language vs studying. The analogy I think of with languages is the gym. You can read about working out day and night, and it's good to read a little bit about training, but ultimately if you want to be in shape you have to hit the gym!!! Same with studying a language, you gotta start using it. I am doing spanish as well, feel free to hit me up if you want to be language partners.

Once again, practice, practice, practice.  A tutor pal, or language partner, but someone who speaks it well.

I am learning Spanish at the moment and after studying just vocabulary and grammar for one year, I had never talked with any Spanish speakers because I was scared of making mistakes and being wrong and not worthy in their eyes. Then, one day, my mom heard someone speaking Spanish at a restaurant we went to and immediately told her that I spoke Spanish. That first day, I struggled a lot and I could only say basic phrases like "how are you" but I had broken the initial barrier of speaking with natives. Within 6 months, my Spanish has improved significantly and I am even at the point where I started notice when my teacher, who studied Spanish in South America, was making mistakes. After that first experience, I no longer had the initial fear of speaking and since then I have spoken with hundreds of Spanish speakers, even though I know that I will make mistakes. The key is to not translate between your target language and native language, but rather learn the words as they are(so when I hear pelota, I automatically think of a picture of a ball rather than the word ball itself). Now I am living in the culture of Latin America daily by speaking Spanish, watching Univision, and listening to the likes of Romeo Santos, Marc Anthony, Jesse y Joy, and Enrique Iglesias. You must be willing to practice with natives and have the confidence and willingness to speak even though you will be wrong at times.

I agree with all of you. The method we are all taking about is the Michel Thomas Method. See it here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8jhy7ZQC38

I've been learing Spanish because I work with many Spanish speakers from Peru, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Boliva...

Hello Rocio I kind of understand what you wrote because our educational system is awful specially for learning english, I have lived the same as you because I have studied english since elementary school but they only focus on grammar and vocabulary most of the teachers that I had weren´t able to speak english fluently they only utter some words and phrases and pretend to speak the language. Like Joe wrote before a language is not a matter of study is a tool for communication and that is what most schools fail to their students, learning a language is similar to learn a new sport. I encourage you to learn english by your own, I like to see videos from benny lewis as well and from other polyglots like luca lampariello, Susana, richard simcot etc. For example i study english every day at least 30 minutes while I am going to work, using my cell phone. I try to do many things on english and I am not afraid of making mistakes because they are my friends and if you don´t stumble then you wouldn't learn that ability well enough. It takes time to be able to comunicate your ideas easily and without effort like you do with spanish, and as a language is an entity that always evolve as times goes by you will learn something new even in your native language.