How to get better at conversing with an iTalki tutor?

After passing JLPT3 (the old system) 12 years ago, my Japanese knowledge has atrophied over the decade from disuse. I’ve decided to pick it back up again last month.

I decided to get a tutor from iTalki with a focus on passing N4. I needed structure to learn Japanese, so we’ve started on the TRY N4 book. Our classes are usually 30 minutes of conversation and 30 minutes of going through the book.

During the conversation piece, I found it difficult to actually speak Japanese despite being able to slowly read the sentences in the book.

Since iTalki classes feel like they’re mostly self-directed, I’m trying to figure out if there’s a better way for me to construct these classes apart from the 1/2 conversation and 1/2 textbook model I decided to go for. I still need to learn more vocab and grammar, so the textbook portion of the class helps.

My goal is to eventually being able to read and speak Japanese. I’m also going through jpdb.io for kanji and vocab retention, but I think I need some other resources to practice speaking. Should I convert the class to be 100% conversational and go through the textbook on my own instead in order to get better quicker at conversing? Should I ask my tutor to give me English sentences to translate to Japanese?

I’m still trying to translate English to Japanese in my head with an English sentence structure. (I’ve also been studying Spanish these last two years and the sentence structure in English is similar.) I’m remembering now how different Japanese sentence structure is, which is why I’m having a lot of difficulty producing Japanese sentences orally.

Just wondering if anyone might have tips for me? Thanks a bunch!