How to improve speaking skills

It has been more than one year since I came to the U.S. Not to mention learning the new culture is difficult, I found it very hard to join in a casual conversation with New Yorkers. Granted, I don't have many things in common with natives, but the real problem seems to be my lack of language skills. So what should I do to improve my verbal ability? I started to observe people who have great language skills and found one thing in common in them: they all like to speak! Of course they like to speak. It is not difficult to think that one should do something in order to be good at doing that thing! So the answer to my question is that I need to like speaking in order to speak better. It was brave of me to come to the U.S. Now I should be a bit braver and speak up! Let's not be shy people! We will reach where we want to be if we keep chasing our dreams!