I've noticed recently when I'm opening that my attempts at starting a convo devolve into dead end series of question conversations. How are you? Where are you from? How long have you been here? What do you study? ... etc etc. It's not dynamic and doesn't really engage the other person.

What's a way of breaking out of this, making the other person comfortable and getting them talking more freely?

I'm sure I never used to have this problem :/