Hi Nerea! I am language learning passionate, and just finished a masters in computer assisted language learning. The most common mistake people make when self-studying and learning with their own list of resources instead of going with a tutor (best, but expensive route) is not aligning their learning goals with their learning methods. For example, a lot of people get trapped in Duolingo forever, or try to learn language just by getting input (reading books, watching series etc). While that helps building vocabulary, it builds mostly passive vocabulary, so you will be able to understand your target language much better, but when asked to communicate something you will get stuck!

Simply put you can't learn how to ride a bike just by reading about it. The same is with language. If you want to converse and communicate, you need to converse and communicate. When you do that you focus on vocabulary that you care about, you realize what you can't say and notice your mistakes, and you solidify your internal language.

Many struggle with active practice and it's the easiest activity to ignore. Yes, it can be hard depending on your current proficiency level but luckily there are many ways to go around it! Here are some tips:

1. Write a journal in your target language. Do what you can, honestly, a few sentences a day can go very far. This is good for mental health too, as a bonus 🥰 If you are going to do only one thing from this list, pick this one!!
2. Participate in prompt challenges, the ones by fingtam languages are my favorite https://www.instagram.com/p/B4ZGMgDHznT/ The instagram language community often has one like this.
3. Talk to yourself! Im not sure if you feel comfortable, you can try in the shower hahahaha
4. You can try apps like HelloTalk or Tandem, where you can find language partners to talk to (I personally find this too hard and stressful, but the apps are successful, so it must work well for some people)
5. You can try playing online games in your target language. For example, Among Us allows you to pick French or Portuguese.
6. Try combining other study methods with active practice. Watched a series episode or read a blog post in your target language? Summarize it in 1-2 sentences. Try to use some of the words you just found out about.
7. You can play Polygloss! The app I am making (and the reason I am in this group). Polygloss is an image guessing game that allows you to write creatively and play with other people. It's much less stress than having a full conversation with a stranger and you still get output practice. It's specially useful if you are out of creativity for a journal and just need a little source of inspiration. https://polygloss.app

PS: if you have the budget for 1:1 classes, I recommend a platform called italki. I do my German classes there and I combine it with Polygloss and some of the methods above.