So, in essence, many people who learn Japanese do not communicate almost at all, except for maybe a few partner exercises; that’s it, no real-world speaking. However, that is because in the classroom, for example, or strictly for a test, it is not required to be able to speak fluently—not to the level you learn your reading ability and perhaps writing ability, as well as listening. Many can understand and read very well but speak nowhere near their other levels because they did not study it in balance. There are also those who study strictly for speaking but neglect kanji altogether, and vice versa; you get the point.
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Speaking from my experience, it is important to learn everything in balance, in my opinion, and that includes Kanji comprehension, speaking, reading, and listening. Otherwise, one will be much more lacking than the other. Of course, this does not mean it is forbidden to focus on one first; if your goal is, for example, to pass the JLPT for a specific purpose or degree, then it is understandable.
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Even if you make mistakes, try shadowing, speak and record yourself, listen to it, and see how you sound, where you might have been wrong, why a sentence is spoken the way it is, etc. Short forms, te forms, etc. What many people learned in real speech is that they could maybe speak 30% out of the 100% of what they learned grammar-wise, and their construction of sentences would be very unnatural or very broken. You could kind of understand their point, not always even, but it sounded very broken. However, their reading ability was as great as ever; they did not have issues reading a manga or a newspaper, depending on their level, obviously, same goes for listening.
Many are also scared to talk to new people with the possibility of messing up or are too embarrassed simply to try to form sentences. Even if it would be wrong, everybody does make mistakes, and the only way to improve and learn from it is to actually speak the language and see if you did say it right. If not sure, ask the other person if you structured it right, if the other person obviously knows Japanese well.
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I was this way myself but overcame that and made many mistakes when speaking one year ago in comparison to now. However, through speaking what I learned and upon learning, trying to use it in speech, I quickly got the hang of it and do not need to think twice about what I already know now when speaking to a Japanese person, to my Japanese friends, etc. We often meet every week and speak a lot in Japanese nowadays, helping me much further. They also correct me if I ever make a mistake or tell me to phrase something more natural than the “Textbook” forced way.
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Anyways, this post is to encourage new learners to actually learn Japanese and practice speaking a lot, even if you feel embarrassed. Do not. Nobody judges you but yourself.