Personal anecdote from which you may be able to pick a thing or two: back in the day RPGs were not translated. I stumbled upon Chrono Trigger and found the game

Personal anecdote from which you may be able to pick a thing or two: back in the day RPGs were not translated. I stumbled upon Chrono Trigger and found the game amazing but could barely understand anything beyond the basics. I sucked it up and got a paperback dictionary. Mid game I was barely referring to it, and by the "end" of it (several dozens of hours, possibly hundred; got 10 of the 14 or so endings) things were treading along nicely. I followed up with Day of the Tentacle for which the complete Full Talkie was only in English (the French one had only partial voice over in English) and since it was so hot at the time to listen to voices in games I really wanted to get that experience, so again, I went for it. It was much more involved as DotT relies on wittiness and humor a lot, so that was definitely a step up. By the end of it I was really getting good at listening instead of just reading the English subs. From then on I got lots and lots of exposure from movies and TV shows because I began to catch how flawed or lacking some of the French dubs were for the stuff I watched. The missing part was speaking, and for this I happened to be repeatedly tasked with preparing and presenting some stuff in English class. The key points being: "repeatedly", like, a lot (once a week for three years) and "preparing" which really helps in progressing (you can't realistically be expected to wing it at talking if you only were doing "passive" activities like reading and listening) because I had to both write and rehearse presenting beforehand, which are both "active" tasks. The "fluent" part then comes out as the sum of all this experience. (Also, at some point I switched all of my OS/software/phone to English. Little tidbits like this mean I was faced with English every single days for the most trivial things, so that it just becomes second nature) (Also also, getting involved in online communities, but not lurking: interacting instead, stepping right outside the comfort zone.)