The asking questions thing is good but remember to offer a bit of yourself too. Otherwise it ends up like an interveiw.
I have struggled with this myself, those awkward silences are horrible. But if you observe other people talking you learn from them. A friend of mine just randomly starts talking about something she's been up to recently so I do that sometimes. Or you can talk about what a mutual friend's been up to. Ask if they watched an interesting program you saw and discuss.
A really good tip I learned from my partner is to read a paper every day - then you always have something to talk about.
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