The transition from writing to speaking is nerve wrecking. As I continue conversations in portuguese, I adopt and use new words and expressions that I have never heard before. I find that I do not need to study the word or expression after being introduced to it for the first time. The pattern, structure, cadence, and increase of vocabulary comes naturally the more I put myself out there. I feel nervous to join the microphone calls in the discord server I am apart of. I have so much confidence writing and I know I can write very advanced because I have all the time in the world to find specific words that I rarely use and do not know, think about how I want to sound, and make myself sound perfect after many corrections, etc but with speaking? I cannot do that. What the others hear is exactly what they get. Right now I am refraining from using my portuguese to write. There needs to be a balance with my portugues. It is weird for me to be better in other areas in portugues but not all of them. From listening, writing, comprehension and speaking...balance is important. I guess the good thing is that when I decide to fully invest in my other languages, I know what to do and what not to do since at this point im not a newbie to language learning anymore. Listening is really the underdog of langauge learning because if I could not understand, I could not use or adopt what I hear from others or respond to them. I be looking like a bird when brasilians, my family and friends talk to me in portugues. Their speech do not feel so fast and quick anymore now that I can follow along to their words. When I first joined iTalki, I said on my profiile that I would share my language journey on my profile. I had many tears with portugues, the letter R made me cry SO many times, but I am proud of myself. It is very rewarding.