Post-beginner

I'm currently getting to the stage where I no longer still have major grammar points to learn:
I know most of the tenses, how to expand my sentences using conjunctions, adjectives, articles, contractions [em + o = no], adverbs, pronouns and so on.

I'm reaching the stage between a high beginner and a lower intermediate level. This should be exciting but I'm quite fearful of it. I have been at this stage in French for the last 2/3 years and have been stuck in a rut ever since. In my opinion, this is the most unmotivating stage whilst learning a language because you no longer see any progress. This is not true- ever word you learn, mistake you correct, new sentence pattern you encounter contributes towards your growing language abilities- however it is very difficult to see your own progress. It's not like at the mid-beginner stage where you learn a particular tense such as the conditional or the subjunctive and suddenly a lot of sentences you read now become so much clearer and you can definitely say that you have made progress. In this stage you need to learn so many individual words, phrases and sentence constructions that you won't encounter very often [which may lead you to forget them] which makes your progress much more difficult to see. Furthermore there are so many expressions and words related to so many different topics that it seems you'll never get anywhere. The realisation that learning a language isn't as easy a ride you may have once thought dawns on you and leaves you completely unmotivated to continue.

However, after twiddling my thumbs in French for the last 2 years due to lack of motivation and making absolutely no progress at all, I've decided not to let my Portuguese suffer the same neglect. It will be hard and maybe unsatisfying but it's a necessary jump I'll need to make in order to see my dream of fluency in a language come that one step closer. I've decided to focus on one subject of conversation at a time. This is because when I used to go through French articles, this is what happened:
-I would spend ages learning all the vocabulary related to a subject.
- I would then move onto another subject that tickles my fancy and have to learn another load of vocabulary to learn.

You learn all the vocabulary in one article and then encounter little to none of that vocabulary in the next article and instead have another chunk of vocabulary to learn which makes you feel as though you haven't made any progress.


If I stick to one topic at a time then this is what I hope will happen:
-I'll spend a lot of time learning the vocabulary of a topic.
-I'll read another article on that topic and probably will still have quite a lot of terminology to learn.
-But after reading a few more articles, I'll start to recognise more of the words I've learnt related to the topic until I've read so many articles that I know most of the terminology without consulting a dictionary.

This way I will be able to see some progress which will keep me motivated. To start off with, I'll make my first topic diets. I've not been eating much recently due to nerves about my exam results which will determine if I go to university in September and which are due in 22 days. Being worryingly underweight as been an issue for me for quite some time. It's something I'm interested in reading about so that will be my first topic. I think it's important to choose a topic which has some significance in my current life or interests as it will make me more interested and motivated in reading it.