hi there I'm Drew Badger the world's first and number one English Fluency
Guide and in this video I'd like to help solve another problem that a lot of
learners ask me about and this is when maybe they don't really have a lot of
speaking confidence they're nervous about other people coming up and
beginning to ask them questions or try to start speaking so how do you deal
with this how do you how do you deal with the nervousness you feel when other
people are asking you questions about fluency or you know just having trying
to have a conversation with you now the answer to this is really the same answer
that you would give to any situation where you're feeling nervous about
something especially nervous about other people trying to try to make you
interact in some way in this case you're speaking but it begins with preparation
so something I would do when I was struggling with Japanese and trying to
learn how to say things and feeling very nervous actually about speaking is when
people would start talking to me I would think oh no I I'm actually worried in
conversations because I don't know how to respond to people and even worse than
that people will know that I don't know how to respond to people I know that's a
weird sentence but it's one thing to have weak ability but when people know
you have weak ability that's it really felt it really felt very bad for me so
what I started doing was just visualizing the process beforehand and
just thinking to myself okay like I'm going to sit here and just visualize
other people coming to me and trying to speak and asking me questions and things
like that and I thought okay like the worst that happens is I won't be able to
understand what they're saying or I won't be able to give them you know like
the answer they're looking for or whatever or maybe even I make a mistake
it doesn't really matter but I would just visualize this process and when you
begin thinking okay what's the worst that could happen like it's really not
so bad even if I felt a little bit nervous in conversations actually very
nervous I'm a little bit like ashamed to admit it but yeah I did feel very
nervous about it but really I mean it doesn't matter I'm not Japanese I wasn't
born in Japan so I'm not supposed to be fluent native Japanese
speaker so it's okay if I make mistakes so when I get into a conversation like
that with people I don't have to feel so nervous so that's the the beginning part
of this but then also the second step for visualization is that you're
imagining yourself actually being confident it doesn't really matter if
you know the language or not it's just more you feel excited about that coming
because you know it's an opportunity for you to learn something so don't think
about it as a chance for you to be embarrassed or for someone to expose you
because you don't know how to speak or you might make a mistake think about it
as a chance to learn something Wow somebody is actually coming to me to ask
something or to practice with me I'm probably going to make a mistake but
it's more important that I get to learn something right now so I'm actually
having a experience right now where like somebody walks up to me and I think oh
no like I could make a mistake but at the same time at the same time I do have
an opportunity to learn something from them
so I could just maybe like learn a new word or phrase or even I just have
another opportunity to practice and improve so there's always that that's
thinking about excuse me what's the the positive thing that's stronger than
maybe the negative thing that I might think is happening so when you're
visualizing this think about both of these situations when you're not around
native speakers number one remember that it's not as bad as you think it is
it never is bad is we think it will be and then the other part of that it's
like wow I actually can learn something from this so it wants you to be more
excited and it makes you more excited about getting into conversations with
people now the second part of this is when you're actually in the conversation
especially if you feel nervous focus on just having a few things that you can
use to respond to people and to get them speaking more so if you feel nervous in
conversations when you're speaking with people do do the like this kind of let
them do the talking and you can do that by just saying things like tell me more
it's like these are the three magic words that will get other people
speaking because most people pretty much all of us really I don't really know a
person that doesn't like talking about themselves you know Here I am I'm
talking about myself in this video but when you're thinking about these things
if you allow the people to speak they're going to be
much more excited to speak and you will learn a lot more in the process but
during this time where you're developing your confidence you're improving a
little bit more you should be trying to speak if you can but if you don't really
have that confidence and you just want to be a little bit more comfortable
about it you want to take a bit more time and really become much more
confident then you can do that by just asking questions like oh that's
interesting tell me more so even if you don't understand everything you're
hearing you're just getting like could you explain more about this tell me more
about that you're letting the other person speak
and it's just getting you excited and making you feel more comfortable about
being in the conversation itself the third step to this is as you do feel
more confident you begin saying more things and I've talked about this in
previous videos where I really want you to not just say the same thing over and
over again but give a slightly different answer a slightly different way of
expressing something maybe change one word or part of a phrase when you're
expressing something that like instead of saying like I went yesterday and it
was a lot of fun you could say I went yesterday and it was really interesting
or it was really engaging or I had a great time so you're taking one thing
you're maybe saying the same thing but adding something to that and changing
that expression just a little bit so these are great ways where you can take
what you know and as you're learning things you begin to push yourself a
little bit more to speak a little bit more and over time as you do these three
steps visualizing listening and then speaking a little by little this is
what's really going to help you develop your speaking confidence in feet make
you feel much more excited about conversations so if you feel nervous try
following these steps even just the visualization by itself can really have
you feeling a lot more excited about conversations and a lot less nervous
really you're not going to remove the fear but that your job is to make the
fear so insignificant so tiny so small because the excitement that you have
about getting into a conversation is way up here so the amount of fear doesn't go
away but you can make the fear seem like a lot less because you're just so much
more excited about the conversation anyway if this has been helpful for you
do click on this video click that like button and do let me know in a comment
down below if you have any questions about what I'm
talking about you can also become a subscriber to the YouTube channel if you
haven't already and if you'd like to learn more about improving your speaking
confidence your fluency everything else you need in order to become a confident
fluent speaker do click on the link in this video or on the link in the
description below this video and that will take you to our free English
fluency quiz so this will let you tell us exactly what your problem is maybe
you struggle with your pronunciation your listening or maybe your confidence
because you're watching this video but click on that and we can tell you the
exact steps you can take to improve that so you really develop your fluency much
much faster so click on the link in this video or on
the link in the description below this video and I look forward to seeing you
in the video coming up next bye bye