French Learning Thoughts

How can we learn a language and speak it like a native speaker? I live in Belgium as an expat and there are three official languages, French, Flemish and German. Since I work for a french speaking company and live in french speaking part, it's quite useful to take the language. I have been taking french classes in the evening at the school for about three years and I'm at the level A2 - B1.

I started to think about how can I really speak french? Even though I'm making progress at the class, I don't really speak the language in daily life, which puts myself in a place where I understand a lot but cannot express myself.

Recently I discovered a podcast called Inner French, which introduces the idea of learning french like how a kid learns to speak, e.g. learning by hearing and using it in daily life without caring the grammar etc. From there, I started to watch many YouTube videos, series and listen to podcast in French. I found myself slowly understand more and more, even though I don't really know all the words.

So far I only have small positive experience, but I'm confident that I will eventually speak it! Today, I asked my french-speaking bestie to start speaking french with me. I knowwww, it's really challenging and I already stumped on a lot of words I don't know how to say! Which is a great thing as I will learn more words day by day :p Sink or swim that's it! XD