I have two target languages at the moment (French and Hindi) that I want to bring myself up to a higher level of proficency on. In both, I can understand dumbed-down texts and can construct straightforward sentences, but have trouble expressing or understanding complex thoughts. Basically, I’ve passed the point where there’s much grammar to learn per se and my biggest obstacles now are vocabulary, production/comprehension speed, and idiomatic expressions / discourse markers. What’s the best way to go about improving? I’m a linguist and learn best through that lens. One of my biggest problems in comprehension is understanding individual words but not being able to grasp the meaning of the phrase as a whole (whether because it’s idiomatic or because it’s syntactically or semantically tricky). I’m lucky in that there are a ton of media in both of the languages I’m working on, but one problem is that if I’m watching, say, a movie, I tend to get annoyed at the fact that I can’t 100% understand it and get caught up in the details rather than letting the language wash over me.
What do you do to further your proficiency? For any language, of course. And I’m ruling out talking to a native speaker because obviously if you have access to one, conversation with him/her is one of the best options.