What's the difference here?

You see the simplest answer is this: that understanding is a passive skill.

Speaking English is an active skill.

You see, understanding English, understanding a language only requires passive, or what I call uncontrolled memory.

Speaking requires controlled memory.

Have you ever been in a situation that you remember you want to go some place, and you kind of vaguely remember what it looks like, but you just can not recall the street name, just can not remember.

But until you see something, or see a sign, suddenly you remember, "oh yup that's what it is."

Now, I remember that.

You see, that's uncontrolled memory.

It's passive memory.

But when you are speaking, you do not have that luxury.

Another reason is, when you first learn a language, especially when English may not be your first language, right, there are a lot of fears.

You don't want to look bad, you don't want to look stupid.

So even though you are listening, (and) you understand some of it, you're afraid to practice.

And if you don't practice speaking, you're not going to get good simply because speaking as I said, is an active skill.

Now one of the things that you could do is to get a boyfriend, or a girlfriend who speaks English.

That is their native (language), English.

That is probably the fastest way to learn because you have no choice, but to speak the language every single day on the phone, through text with them, or face-to-face.

That's probably the quickest way to learn.

But another way that you could learn it, if you don't want to do that, is to actually learn public speaking in English.

Here's why.

When you have to present, when you have to speak to groups, in English, it forces you, first of all, to develop that active skill.

You're practicing, you are speaking.

And when you are speaking to groups, you're actually over-training.

What I mean by that, because if you could speak to groups, in English fluently, you can definitely do one-on-one.

When you're speaking to a group of people, it forces you to think about the structure of what you are going to say.

It forces you to articulate.

It forces you to project.

It forces you to use your body language.

Some of these things that you probably wouldn't practice if it's one-on-one.

So by being an effective public speaker in English, naturally it makes you more fluent in the English language.

Does that make sense?

And this is why most people they struggle with the English language, because they can read, that can write, they can listen but they just can not speak it.

Because they don't practice enough.

So go, take some public speaking classes, and then come back 30, 60 days from now.

Come back, right here, and let me know how that works out for you, and if that helps you to become more fluent in English.