Tell me if this sounds familiar. You are in an English conversation,
maybe with someone at work with your child's teacher,
maybe even in a classroom with me.
And the whole time you're in this conversation,
there are questions in your mind. What am I gonna say?
What question might they ask me? What if I don't understand the question?
What if I feel stuck? What if they don't understand my answer?
And as you ask yourself those questions, your anxiety skyrockets.
As your nervousness increases,
it makes it more difficult for you to think about what you might want to say,
and in the end,
it becomes almost impossible or it feels impossible
to speak in that conversation.
All of this might lead you to think that you just
can't speak spontaneously in English,
you can't think and respond quickly to questions.
Does any of that sound familiar to you? If it does, here's the good news.
All of that is solvable In this Confident English lesson today,
I'm going to give you strategies that master your ability to speak spontaneously
in English and that boost your fluency.
And I want you to stick with me because as we go through this lesson,
you are going to have those light bulb aha moments.
You'll feel inspired and think, yes, of course, this makes so much sense.
And that's wonderful the moment that happens. From there,
we need to take the next step.
We need to talk about how to practice because inspiration
doesn't lead to progress practice does.
But before we go there, if this is your first time here, welcome. I'm Annemarie,
an English confidence and fluency coach.
Everything I do is designed to help you get the confidence you want for your
life and work in English.
If you'd love to get years of my Confident English lessons and free resources
for me,
you can find all of that and more over at my Speak Confident English website.
While you're there,
you can also download my free fluency training called How to Get the Confidence
to Say What You Want in English.
And now let's dive in right away with strategy number one,
shift your listening focus.
I want to revisit that scenario I described of being in an English
conversation, listening to the speaker,
and at the same time thinking through all those panic-driven
questions. What will they ask me? What am I going to say? What if I feel stuck?
What if I don't know what to say? When you are listening,
and at the same time asking yourself all those internal what
if questions, it's called listening to respond.
What this means is that when in a conversation,
the focus is more on how you might respond.
If somebody asks a question not on what the person speaking
is saying,
the brain is more focused on the fear and anxiety than on
the speaker. As a result,
there is information or details that get lost.
I would argue that this actually isn't listening at all.
So if that experience sounds familiar to you, what should you do instead?
Listen to understand.
The truth is the best speakers are also
the best listeners. When you listen to understand,
your brain is fully focused on listening to the speaker
aiming to understand what they are saying. What is the background information?
What are the details? What are the questions they are asking?
And all that internal question,
asking and anxiety is turned off when you listen to
understand.
It's so much easier to respond to questions because you have
all the information you need.
I see this happen time and time and time again inside my Fluency School
program. Week after week,
my students have conversations and those conversations get more complex,
more challenging, and yet week after week,
their anxiety goes down because they've learned the art of
listening to understand. So how can you practice this?
There are two things. First, you have to be in English-speaking conversations.
We'll talk more about that in a moment. But first,
the second thing is when you are in a conversation and
those what if questions are coming up in your mind, distracting you,
increasing that anxiety,
we have to quiet those thoughts and shift your
listening attention so that you're listening to understand.
If that sounds difficult, here's what I do.
I do get nervous in some speaking situations,
and if I notice that that anxiety is increasing and
I'm starting to have a lot of those panic-focused thoughts,
I like to press my feet into the ground. I know that sounds very strange,
but here's why.
When I press my feet into the ground and think really consciously
about doing that, when I feel that pressure, it wakes me up,
it wakes my brain up, it wakes my body up,
it wakes up my focus and it captures my attention. It says, Annemarie,
your anxiety is skyrocketing. You're asking yourself all these questions.
You're not listening to the person speaking. You've become distracted.
And that's a reminder to shut off those thoughts and to shift my
energy, my focus, my listening to the person speaking.
The moment I do that, the moment I turn those thoughts off,
that anxiety starts to go back down.
I start getting the information I need so that if someone asks me a question,
I'm more ready. I'm more able to respond.
In every conversation you have,
there is a responsibility to understand what your audience
needs from you, whether your audience is a partner, a spouse, a friend,
a coworker, a neighbor,
or 273 people in an audience listening to a presentation.
When you listen to understand you know what they need from you,
and because you haven't allowed those anxiety focused thoughts to
distract you, you're able to think more clearly,
put your words and thoughts together and express what you need to say in
that moment. It's pretty exciting, isn't it?
And here's where practice becomes important, because again, remember,
inspiration doesn't lead to progress. Practice does.
And thankfully,
finding practice opportunities is easier than ever.
There are endless courses in schools and online speaking
clubs, online communities, conversation partners, private teachers and more.
The key is to find a teacher or coach you trust,
feel comfortable with,
and super important who can demonstrate success,
helping students make progress. Once you've found that person,
do what you can to learn with that teacher or coach.
If I'm that person for you,
if you'd love to learn how to speak more spontaneously in English and improve
your fluency, check out my Fluency School program.
You don't have to figure all of this out alone. Instead,
you can allow my team and I to help you as my student, Gergana said,
Fluency School leads to freedom, the freedom to express yourself.
Just go to speakconfidentenglish.com/fluencyschool.
And now, strategy number two, focus on flow.
If you struggle with perfection like I do,
you may have noticed that the pressure to speak perfectly leads to
feelings, stuck, nervous,
and often in the end saying nothing perfection can stop
a conversation.
So the solution here is to shift the focus from perfection
to focusing on flow.
Flow is the effortless and uninterrupted progression of
ideas and responses in a conversation.
When you start to focus on flow, it completely transforms your fluency.
And here's why. Why?
Fluency is the ability to express yourself easily and
articulately. This is the definition of fluency.
If you express yourself articulately, it means easily, clearly,
and effectively. I like to define fluency as clear,
smooth speech with you in control.
When you shift your focus to flow,
it makes it easier to respond spontaneously and allow the conversation
to keep going forward. I'm gonna show you an example of what I mean,
and then I'll give you a practical way for how to practice this.
Let's say you're in a conversation with a group of new parents and they're all
talking about a book that they've read about raising children.
You've never even heard of this book,
and you're starting to get those anxiety feelings, those what ifs.
What if they ask me a question, I don't even know what book this is,
and then of course someone does. Someone looks at you and says,
didn't you love that book? Here you have two options.
Option number one is this. No, I didn't read that book.
And then there's just this awkward silence.
It's kind of uncomfortable.
Everybody's looking around and then eventually the conversation moves on
and you might feel like you're not part of that conversation. Now,
here's the second option. No, I haven't read that book,
but it sounds like I should tell me what you loved most.
And then someone looks at you and says, oh my gosh. Well, yeah,
you need to read the book. Here's what I loved most. And they're talking to you.
They're sharing what they learned and what they enjoyed about the book with you.
And then in the process,
you find out that both of you have the same challenges in common.
You're both struggling to make sure your kids sleep through the whole night.
There's something more to talk about.
You added on just a little bit more information.
You contributed to the conversation and allowed it to move forward.
Your answer still acknowledged that you hadn't read this book.
It was also spontaneous. It didn't focus on perfection,
it focused on flow. It focused on keeping the conversation moving forward,
that progression of ideas and responses.
So how can you actually practice this and develop your flow?
There are three action steps. First, keep it simple.
Time and time again,
I hear struggling English speakers make the mistake of overcomplicating their
responses. They're trying to find the most complicated vocabulary or structures.
Doing that can inhibit clarity, fluency, and flow.
It also puts added pressure to get it perfectly right.
Keeping it simple removes that pressure and allows you to find
the quickest, easiest, clearest way to communicate in the moment.
Action. Step number two is use and or,
but these two words are conjunctions, and when we use them in a sentence,
we have to add extra details. For example, I could not say,
no, I haven't read that book, but,
and then nothing we have to add more detail onto the sentence.
In the example I shared with you, no, I haven't read that book yet,
but it sounds like I should tell me what you liked the most. Now,
I've added on some key details and because I was listening to the conversation
listening to understand,
I know that they really enjoyed this book and I'm asking specifically about what
they liked the most.
Adding on just a little bit more information encourages that flow,
that continuation of the conversation.
The third action step is to buy time when you need it.
What this means is to say something that allows you to delay your
response. For example,
let's say you're in a business meeting talking about marketing strategy.
Someone turns looks at you and says, what are your thoughts on this?
And you don't feel totally ready to respond.
You can still contribute to flow by having an immediate
response that allows you to state that you want to delay
giving more information. Let me give you an example. Again,
someone asks what you think about marketing strategy, and you might say,
thanks for that question. I'm still putting my thoughts together on that.
Could you give me another moment and come back to me?
Do you notice that I responded immediately to the question?
I didn't shut the conversation down. I simply said,
I need a little bit more time. And then it allowed the conversation to move on.
Others can share their ideas and they can come back to me in a moment after I've
had a little bit more time to put those thoughts together.
Once you know this strategy and when you listen to others around you,
you will hear English speakers use this strategy all the time.
We love asking for more time to think,
and we all need it sometimes whether we just don't feel comfortable sharing
our ideas in that moment or we're not fully ready to do it,
there's a variety of reasons why we might need to buy some time
to delay a longer response. And now, strategy number three,
to master your spontaneous speaking skills and boost your fluency.
Follow a smart structure without a doubt in any conversation that is
complicated or challenging,
it can be difficult to decide what exactly should you say.
How much information do you need to give and what order should you give that
information in? And this is where having a smart structure can help.
For example, here's one that works all the time. What so what?
And now what? Answering the question,
what allows you to introduce your problem,
your thought or your idea answering?
So what highlights how the information you're going to give is
relevant or why is it important?
And now what allows you to share what is expected next?
What's the action step or what should people do after listening to you?
Let me give you an example of a what. So what, and now what?
I think we should paint the living room blue because it's a calming color and
it's easy on the eyes.
Let's narrow down a few shades of blue that we like and then make a decision
with the kids. I have my what, so what? And now what?
Using a structure like this does three things. It keeps your responses simple.
It takes away the guesswork or stress in terms of what you should say and in
what order. And when you practice it consistently,
it improves your ability to think and respond fast. In addition to this,
what so what now? What structure here are two more for you to consider?
Number one, point, reason and example. And of course,
this would allow you to make your point. State your idea or opinion,
give your reason for that opinion and an example.
And the second structure is easy. Problem solution.
State the problem and give your solution.
Here's how you can practice this particular strategy.
Start to feel very comfortable with it and build automaticity.
The ability to use this structure or framework automatically without
thinking about it too much. First, you'll need a piece of content.
For example, a blog post, a newspaper article, a podcast,
or a TED talk.
Then you'll need to listen or watch or read whatever the content is.
And as you do that, think carefully about the what,
so what and now what that you observe in that content.
You can even take a few notes. Once you're finished with that,
take a look at your notes and then practice speaking out loud,
talking about what you learned. Why is it important and what's next?
What did you take away from that particular TED Talk or that podcast?
This allows you to practice that what? So what now, what structure?
Now, if you've never done something like this before,
if you've never practiced speaking out loud and then taking time to
observe or listen to how you speak and evaluate it,
I've got an in-depth training that will help you.
It's a fluency training called How to Get the Confidence to Say What You Want.
You can find out more.
Get that full training at my Speak Confident English.com website.
You now have three concrete strategies to help you master speaking
spontaneously and boost your English fluency. As you learned,
inspiration is fantastic,
but it doesn't lead to progress practice does.
After you watch this lesson,
make sure you find opportunities to practice speaking English,
be part of conversations. Find that teacher that you're comfortable with.
Join a class or an online speaking club like My Confident Women Community.
Find a book club where you live or join a volunteer group.
These are all wonderful ways to get real English speaking practice.
With that, if you enjoyed today's lesson,
I would love to know and you can tell me in a few simple ways. Number one,
give this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube, and while you're at it,
you can subscribe so you never miss one of my Confident English lessons.
Lastly, you can also share a comment with me down below.
Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you next time.