Sure, this is completely normal. For example, coastal Albanians tend to understand Italian films, television and radio quite well just from exposure to Italian-language broadcasting, even if they never actually interact with Italians. And as I mentioned elsewhere, for a lot of people who learn to understand Spanish media, it all happens through telenovelas, not time spent with actual Latin American people.

Over the last year, I have been studying Serbian and Albanian without much interaction at all with speakers, and I am already at the point where I can enjoy many films and television programmes – sure, I might have to occasionally pause the video and rewind it or look up a word in the dictionary, but the learning and reference materials I have at my disposal are completely sufficient for that, there is no need to actually speak with anyone.