Oh I- - I need to practice my speaking.
I'm going to try to find a speaking partner on the RealLife English App.
Hi I'm Andrea! Where are you speaking from?
I... I... I come from... uh...
Well, it's Friday night and I have no plans.
You know what? I'm gonna find someone to have a nice chat with.
Hey, what's up! I'm Ethan from Barcelona. Where are you speaking from?
Oh what a small world, I'm Andrea and I'm also in Barcelona.
Oh, awesome! Yeah. So, I wanna know what do you usually do
on Friday night. Um I really like hanging out with my friends, but tonight...
Hey there RealLifers! As you might have noticed, confidence can totally impact your capacity to
communicate clearly. If you are constantly avoiding having conversations and connecting
with the world out of fear and insecurity, this lesson was created especially for you.
As a language learner myself, I’ve experienced various moments
of insecurity and even considered quitting learning a new language.
But my purpose of connecting with my friends was stronger than my fears and insecurities. So,
as someone who has been there before, here I am to share some valuable insights with you.
In this lesson we are going to reflect on:
Language as a means for communication. What confidence is and how it impacts
your fluency and clarity in the language. What accent is and if it really matters.
And finally how to improve your confidence. So, if you want to become more confident and
connect to the world through English, just like Shrushti who says they literally improved their
English within 3 months of watching our channel and now can speak more confidently, make sure
you hit that subscribe button and bell down below so you don’t miss any of our new lessons.
So, let’s start with something that is fundamental to every language learner.
Fun fact - The root of the word “communication” in Latin is communicare,
which means to share, or to make common. In order to communicate effectively,
you need to be what we call, communicatively competent. You might be wondering, though.
What makes someone a competent communicator?
According to Jack C. Richards,
“communicative competence includes the following aspects of language knowledge:
• knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions.
• knowing how to vary our use of language according to the setting
and the participants (fo example knowing when to use formal and informal speech
or when to use language appropriately for
written as opposed to spoken communication).
• knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts (for example narratives,
reports, interviews, conversations).
• knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s
language knowledge (for example through using different kinds of
communication strategies). And last but not least,
let’s understand communication as the relationship that involves interaction between participants.
It is in interacting with others that confidence plays a fundamental role.
That’s why our main goal at RealLife English is to empower you to actually use language in order
to communicate, rather than merely repeat what you are told to in your classroom or
even in your textbook. This is why we created the RLE App, to allow you to practise English
at the touch of a button! You can connect with other learners from around the world,
for short conversations and build up your confidence when speaking English.
The best part is that it’s free and you can download it right now in the
Google Play or Apple Stores! I’ll also add a link here and one in the description below!
With that being said, let’s reflect on how confidence can determine whether you are going to
be a successful language learner or not and talk a little bit about clarity, fluency and accent.
First of all, it is fundamental not to confuse confidence with arrogance.
I really like how Scott Berkkun defined these:
On the flip side:
Now, let’s talk about the opposite of confidence which is fear and insecurity.
Fear and insecurity are the number one enemies to anyone trying to develop
a new skill. When it comes to language learning,
people tend to be afraid of judgment and making mistakes when communicating with others.
Let’s hear some insightful comments that Hadar made on this topic.
...positive thoughts generate positive feelings, and
positive feelings lead to take action. It's easier to take
action when you feel better than when you feel depressed or
insecure. So when you're insecure, and you allow those
thoughts to consume you, you're less likely to take real action
that will actually change the results in your life. So when
you're positive, you actually take action, and you dare more.
With this difference in mind, why is confidence important at last,
and how does that relate to your fluency?
Let’s consider what Shannon said about fluency in episode seven of our talk show:
I typically aim for conversational fluency in a lot of my languages,
because that's a lot of what I want to be
able to do is have conversations sometimes about specific things, sometimes just generally,
but there's not, there's really just not one
definition of fluent. Like so for me if I can
be understood and understand that's and that like, that would be my definition of fluency.
Thus, based on what Shannon said, fluency is largely associated with being understood and
understanding someone during a conversation. And in order to do so, clarity is a fundamental
aspect of fluency because according to Richard Nordquist, “Clarity is a characteristic of speech
that communicates effectively with its intended audience. Also called perspicuity.”
With that in mind, the more confident you feel about yourself,
the better and more clearly you are able to communicate as shown in this graph.
However, there is one important thing to point out regarding confidence.
It’s just that your confidence level should be balanced, because
if it’s too low, you might not take initiative in starting and keeping conversations going.
Otherwise, when you are excessively confident, you may sound cocky and
discourage your speaking partner from holding and maintaining a conversation with you.
You also might be wondering... What about accents? Does it really matter?
First off, let’s explore in more detail what accent is:
Accent can be defined as a particular way of speaking
which tells the listener something about the speaker’s background.
A person’s pronunciation may show:
1 - the region or country they come from, e.g. a northern accent, an American accent
2 - what social class they belong to, e.g. a lower middle class accent
3- whether or not the speaker is a native speaker of the language, e.g.
She speaks English with an accent/with a German accent.
It is fascinating to see that accent is actually connected to the speaker’s background.
Based on that, we can assume that there are as many accents as there are speakers of a language
since each individual has their unique background.
Let’s listen to Emma’s constructive consideration on accents:
Even the idea of just obsessing over or focusing on a particular
accent, it locks you in, you know, to a certain
way of life, a certain experience, a certain limited or finite set of opportunities.
Where by exposing yourself to a much
richer or diverse range of accents and English speakers, your opportunity
to interact, engage with connect with people,
you know, all around the world is so much greater than then by restricting
yourself to just one, prioritizing one.
So, accent shouldn’t get in the way of your interactions.
As long as you have clarity in your speech, the sky’s the limit considering
the number of English speakers you can connect with around the world.
Now, before we talk about how you can improve your confidence and become a better speaker,
let’s hear from Max, who's a member of the RealLife team and passionate about the English
Language. So, Max, what role does confidence play on your English language learning journey?
Yes, I think that confidence is very important when speaking another language. You know, just
the act of using your mouth to create all these crazy new sounds that sound nothing like the ones
you've used your whole life. That takes a lot of courage in my opinion and maybe you can look
at it as a spec right where on one end you have fear and on the other end you have confidence. If
you're constantly operating around here, instead of fear that's obviously going to limit you. But
if maybe it's not so much about you know taking this huge leap all across the spectrum and all of
a sudden being this super confident person. Maybe it's not about that maybe it's just about getting
enough distance away from the state of fear so that you can actually be yourself, enjoy the
moment and be present in that English speaking situation. And another idea is that even though
grammar and accuracy are important, they can also be dangerous if you let them paralyze you.
But if you feel comfortable speaking in English despite making mistakes, that's going to allow you
to have more and better conversations in English than if you are in this constant state of fear,
if you're scared. And this is another path to becoming a better English speaker just
because you're going to have more conversations in English, more opportunities to speak and this
obviously is going to develop your skills as an English speaker a lot more, a lot further, right?
Thanks a lot for your inspiring comments, Max!
As Max already gave you some tips on how to improve your confidence,
let's expand on that a little bit more and talk about how you can improve your confidence.
Tip number 1 - Language Exposure.
As we say at RealLife English, don’t just learn it, live it. To live your English means to do
some of the things that you do on a daily basis in English. For example, if you like
listening to music, you might turn this into an opportunity to get involved with the language
by singing along and even talking about your favourite songs with your friends.
Exposing yourself to the language in various ways is crucial to improving your confidence.
Your brain gets accustomed to the language and it helps to reduce the
discomfort that comes naturally when you have to use English in real life.
And our tip number 2 is: Speak to yourself.
Pay attention to what I said in episode 247 of the RLE podcast:
And also, I often get asked a lot in the Instagram Live that I do
every week about like the app and how people are saying, Oh,
I'm nervous to go on it because
I'm nervous to speak and what can I do and things like this.
So this is a great way to prepare yourself to help to
build your confidence to practice having those conversations on your own or recording
yourself, you know, to then prepare and just
bite the bullet and go for it. And do you start using the app and speaking to people.
Tip number 3 - Focus on Connection
Another core value that we have at RealLife English is connection over perfection.
When you are too concerned about sounding perfect when communicating in a foreign language,
you forget about the essentials. That is, language is mainly used to establish connections
with others and in order to do so, clarity is way more important than sounding perfect.
Let’s Listen to Emma’s and Lindsay’s insightful thoughts and tips about language and connection:
And I think that the more that we genuinely and deeply connect with each other, and obviously,
language is a powerful,
the power, the most powerful way of doing that. We
get to, to re-imagine or re-experience the world on our
own terms. And, you know, often that's quite eye-opening.
So the 'connection,
not perfection', the way I connect to that is, I never want our learners to feel that,
right I never want language to get in the way
of human connection. That's what that's all about. It should
always be the number one goal is to maintain the connection. So if
you make a mistake, don't drop your eye contact,
don't feel embarrassed, don't move away, look at the person in the eye
and keep the connection going. It's up to you at that
moment, whether you lose the connection, or you keep it,
right. So we have a lot more control than we think we do.
Tip number 4 - Take action
And for our last tip, let’s compare learning a language to learning how to swim. If you
only read about it, you will never actually feel confident when you jump into the swimming pool.
So, you can only master a skill if you actually focus on the practical aspects
of it and not on what is said about it. So, start, then learn. Don’t learn, then start.
With this action taker mindset, your confidence growth is directly proportional to your attitude
of putting things into practice. In other words, you gain confidence by doing things consistently.
As a final consideration, remember we are all human, and it is OK not to be confident
all the time. From time to time we have put ourselves out there and there are moments that
we are going to feel nervous and insecure, but we do it anyway and this is how we grow.
I hope this video has helped you boost your confidence. After watching it, I highly
recommend that you start practicing right away. So, check out this video packed with precious tips
on how you can improve your speaking even if you have nobody to speak with at the moment.