For my IB test in Spanish, part of the exam was to read a passage and then talk about what it meant for 20 minutes. You talked to your teacher, who was recording it for whatever judge they might send it to. Having successfully done that, I felt I was pretty close to fluent at the time. I could think in Spanish, rather than needing to translate my thoughts one by one. I could have conversations and say much of what I wanted, but I was still very limited in my vocabulary.
Today, I still remember a lot of the basic structure, but probably half my vocabulary is gone, and what I had at my peak was a tiny tiny amount. So I feel ya. And sadly, I don't know of any good way to rapidly expand your vocabulary (aside from being 5 years old).
Part of that probably has to do with vocabulary frequency - you can successfully communicate daily needs with a surprisingly small repertoire of vocab, but it's those words you use once a day (or once a week, or less frequently) that will irritate you. It doesn't even have to be the Italian equivalent of an "SAT-level" level word like "irascible," but something like, say, "eyebrows," because it seems like such a simple, concrete word that you used in English as a small child. Also, it seems to me that "difficult" English words are more likely to have cognates or shared word roots in the Romance languages than many "basic" words.
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Today, I still remember a lot of the basic structure, but probably half my vocabulary is gone, and what I had at my peak was a tiny tiny amount. So I feel ya. And sadly, I don't know of any good way to rapidly expand your vocabulary (aside from being 5 years old).
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