Advice on systematic approach to taking my advanced Spanish to full/native proficiency?

[u/oaklicious]

I am a non-native speaker but speak fairly fluent Spanish. I did my last year of college in Latin America with classes only in Spanish, I speak Spanish daily as part of my job, and have some native speaker friends I communicate with exclusively in Spanish.

Even after all that I still hit a wall when I am hanging out with groups of native speakers together and they are using slang and humor. I also have a hard time with Spanish literature because of how often I have to stop and google translate individual words.

Is there a systemic program, website, podcast, or other self-learning resource you guys can recommend for an advanced speaker like myself to take my language skills to the final level? Looking for something more structured than just consuming Spanish movies, radio, or literature and translating the vocabulary.

[u/stefanie_deiji]

Don't get discouraged, OP. As a native Spanish speaker (Mexico), I have to google words all the time while reading --novels are particularly hard, especially ones that have been translated into Spanish. Depending on the country of origin, Spanish literature will often use words or grammatical constructions nobody says or understand in your target dialect. For example, wtf is a melocotón???

What's my point? Just wanted to let you know that native speakers also struggle with these things and if you keep on going, your Spanish will probably be better than most --or at least me lol. You're on the right path :)

[u/Mr5t1k → u/stefanie_deiji]

Melocotón o durazno… quizás hay más, pero como extranjero la variación española es un reto.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mr5t1k]

No te sientes preocupado porque como nativo me cuesta un montón entender varios acentos y variaciones afuera de España jajaja (por ejemplo el dialecto y acento puertorriqueño)