I had been learning English for a couple of years and everything was cool and all until I realized — I can't talk. I watched TV shows, youtube videos, I listened to podcasts, and I was able to understand pretty much everything. But when it came to a live conversation, I got stuck. And it's not that I have a terrible accent or that I'm self-conscious about my voice (but that too, to be honest). It's mostly that I just can't express my thoughts correctly. My brain works weirdly. It translates English speech into Russian pretty well, but otherwise it stalls. How come? Doesn't it use the same vocabulary for both operations? There is only one explanation I can think of: when you hear an unfamiliar word in some phrase, you might try to figure out its meaning from the context, and your brain usually doesn't even memorize the word itself, being satisfied with getting the meaning of the whole phrase. So, if you don't know some specific word, — no big deal, there's a decent chance you'll get the point anyway. That seems easier than trying to come up with a whole phrase from scratch. Because not everything can be translated literaly, word for word. So, apparently, you need not only a vocabulary of words, but also a contextual vocabulary of phrases, too. And also you need to be able to use it. Which means you need to talk more. Well, I don't think I'm ready for talking yet, but writing is a lot more easier, right? So, here I am. Writing.
I'm sure there are tons of mistakes above, but I hope that doesn't look like complete gibberish. Well, I had to start somewhere anyway...
Here is my opinion: when you listen or read something, you only need to know 80% or so to understand the overall meaning, there may be some words which you don't know but you still will have the impression of understanding a lot. The problem is when you want to speak and use the words that you understand, you need to have a much higher understanding of all the words you are using and the grammatical structures. One technique that is very useful to work out how much you actually understand is to transcribe (write down what you are hearing). Many people use this and it works very well. You need to know all the words to be able to write them down and it gives you a good idea of the gaps in your knowledge. Also, speaking is always hard at first and you might find that after trying a few times you start to improve very quickly. Don't be afraid to try! You already write well so you should be able to speak even if very slowly. Good luck in your learning!
Thanks for your kind words, Ben! I think live speech is still a restricted area for me. And I won't even try to get there until I'm good enough in writing. Until I'm able to write a hundred-page story without a single mistake and an online dictionary (sounds impossible actually). And that idea about transcribing seems interesting, I'll definitely try it.
I think you did an excellent job for someone who doesn't speak the language fluently. It reads like a native speaker speaks, for the most part.