You can produce the language — your mouth works, you can form sentences, and you can talk about familiar topics on your own. Now it's time to have real conversations with real people.
The goal of this sub-phase is not accuracy. It's comfort. You need to be able to get your thoughts out smoothly enough to have a conversation without constantly freezing, searching for words, or falling back to your native language. You'll make mistakes — lots of them. That's fine. You'll fix them later. Right now, the priority is volume: speak as much as possible, as often as possible.
This is where your hundreds of hours of input really pay off. You'll find that words come to you more easily than you expected, and that many phrases and sentence patterns you've absorbed through immersion start flowing out naturally. The more you speak, the more this happens.
Your first conversation will be rough, but your fourth will sound like a different person.
Watch Ben's video about doing this after 1000 hours of Czech learning to see what the process looks like:
Speaking with a partner — Real conversations with real people. This can be a tutor, a language exchange partner, a friend, or anyone willing to talk with you. Aim for 2-3 conversation sessions per week, at least 30-45 minutes each. The more you speak, the faster you improve. Speaking with Partner
Continue chorusing and monologuing — On days when you don't have a conversation partner, fill your output time with solo practice: chorusing to refine pronunciation and rhythm, reading aloud for articulation, and monologuing to practice retrieving words under pressure.
Corrected Reading Aloud (optional) — Reading aloud with feedback from a tutor or tool that helps you catch pronunciation errors. This is more targeted than uncorrected reading aloud and helps you identify specific sounds or patterns you're getting wrong. Corrected Reading Aloud
Don't abandon input. It's tempting to shift entirely to speaking practice, but you still need substantial input. Your listening and reading continue to feed your acquisition, and stopping input would slow your speaking improvement too. Keep freeflow listening in your daily routine.
Output becomes the largest block: The Pillars of Language Learning
Move to Phase 5 (or the optional Situational Speaking sub-phase) when you:
The emphasis on volume during this phase reflects the principle that learners improve most through sustained practice and exposure. Production practice activates the knowledge built through input, allowing learners to test hypotheses about how the language works and to develop the automatic retrieval and speech planning skills necessary for fluent production. Swain (1985) characterized this as "learning by doing" — the act of producing the language under communicative pressure provides unique feedback (both internal and from the listener) that shapes interlanguage development in ways that input alone cannot.