The bigger problem I have is building rapport. I work with a lot of near-native speakers, where we can understand each other, but we never get to that lively b

The bigger problem I have is building rapport. I work with a lot of near-native speakers, where we can understand each other, but we never get to that lively back-and-forth that comes in an L1 (or a fully fluent L2). It's not a question of relationships -- you can do that well with VERY little verbal. It's a question of nuanced, technical, back-and-forth. I can understand on a mile-high level that they used Python to build an ML system which can recognize whether something is or is not a hotdog, but we never get to the point of discussing finer points of algorithms, nuances of business models, or similar in-depth discussions. Some of these folks have lived in an English-native country for years, but it's just not quite there yet.