You can order food, describe your job and explain what went wrong with your booking. Then someone asks how your weekend was and you have nothing. Small talk is the last thing to arrive, and it is not because your level is too low.
It has no script and no stakes
Transactional language is predictable: there are four things a waiter might say. Small talk can go anywhere, and nothing in it is important enough to give you a strong idea of what to say next. It also moves fast, with short turns. There is no time to build a sentence, which is exactly the skill you have been practising.
The content is culture, not vocabulary
What counts as a normal opening differs enormously. Weather, traffic, football, family, money, how much you paid for something — each of these is standard in some places and odd or intrusive in others. Listen to what people around you actually open with before you decide your material. Copying the local opening is more useful than translating your own.
Prepare five answers and five questions
Have a ready reply for: how are you, how was your weekend, how is work, where are you from, how long have you been here. Not a rehearsed speech — two sentences and something to hand back. The handing back is the part people forget. A question in return is what turns an exchange into a conversation and takes the pressure off you.
Being boring is allowed
In your own language small talk is mostly filler and nobody minds. You are allowed the same in a new one. The aim is warmth and rhythm, not content. Trying to be interesting in a language you are still building is what makes people freeze. Say the obvious thing quickly.
Treat small talk as its own skill, not as proof of your level. Five answers, five questions and permission to be dull will carry almost every one of them.