That's the frustrating stage with learning a language; the part where you don't know enough to pick up the gist of a sentence, but learning more requires you to first pick up the gist of the sentence.

I'm not sure what the solution for this is, other than to tell you that I got over it with no formal study (or even much _in_formal study, now that I think of it) with time. Just hearing the language all around you helps.