I am at a somewhat low-intermediate level in my TL, which isn't really spoken at all in my country. I have nobody to practice speaking to.
Well recently, when I was paired with one of my classmates as a lab partner, I found out that she was a native speaker of the language. Obviously, I didn't want to come off as obnoxious or bother her. But I, having an opportunity that I almost never get, still felt this strong urge to try speaking in it to her. Even just one time, or else I'd regret not having tried.
So, a few days after meeting her, I waited until we had a break in class and had enough time for small talk. I felt myself getting really anxious to the point that I was physically shaking. But beforehand, I still felt somewhat confident in my mind that my flow and my accent would be decent enough.
When I finally forced myself to ask her, "excuse me, you speak (TL), right?" in the language, I sort of hesitated mid sentence, ended up stuttering over it a little, and then the pronunciation came out absolutely horribly. Despite it being such a simple question that I shouldn't have struggled with at my level.
She looked at me awkwardly, gave me a semi-forced smile, and just said, "yeah," in English. We never spoke after that.
It was the most embarrassing moment of my week, and I felt discouraged from trying to speak the langauge ever again. I don't have that much social anxiety or issues with pronunciation really. I can read and listen well enough, and I can speak to myself alone. But the moment I was faced with an actual speaker, I completely sold. I'm not sure if it was rude at all to try to speak to her, so maybe I was in the wrong. But I don't have a chance to speak it with anyone and I didn't expect the interraction to go that badly. And every time I've tried talking to speakers of the language online, I usually either get bullied for making mistakes, or they just switch to English.
I used to want to go to university in this country. But now I'm starting to feel like I'll never be able to have a fluid conversation with anybody, since I can't even manage to get my words out correctly in front of an actual speaker. Should I take lessons with a teacher or something? I'm just not sure what I can really do to improve right now. Any kind of advice helps, thanks
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