Good morning, good afternoon or even good evening, depending on where in the world you
happen to be right now.
In today's lesson we're going to talk a little bit about being shy or being confident when
you are speaking English to people.
Actually today's lesson was a request from one of my YouTube viewers and that person
said "I have a chance to meet foreigners once a
week but ... when in front of them, I get nervous and my mind go blank, so I can't speak
English at all.
What should I do?"
Today I'm going to try and answer that question as best as I can and I am going to give you
five tips for speaking English confidently In a group of people.
Welcome back.
We actually have a word in English to describe this feeling of our minds going blank when
faced with people.
This feeling of freezing in front of people.
We say "stage fright" "stage fright" of course comes form the idea
of performing or acting on a stage in front of people.
The Free Dictionary defines stage fright as acute nervousness associtated with performing
or speaking in front of an audience.
A little nervousness is never a bad thing, however if you become too nervous we can't
think straight and we can't perform properly in front of people.
This feeling of shyness basically comes down to three fears.
I talk about those three fears, and how you can overcome them, in a lot of detail in a
special report, or bonus lesson, that I made you can find out more about that if you join
the Doing English newsletter.
First of all, it is important that you remember that it isn't just you that feels shy and
nervous.
In fact everyone feels shy and nervous to a certain extent.
It's just that some people are much better at ignoring it or hiding it than other people.
But the fact remains, that everyone feels shy and nervous.
So don't think it is just you that feels that way.
It isn't.
It's everyone.
my first tip is simply to prepare.
If we have no preperation, then we will feel more nervous because we don't know what to
expext.
And that will make it much harder for us to get over our nervousness.
So try and imagian in advance the kinds of things you might need to talk about.
Or the kinds of people might meet.
Think about what you might say and work out how you could say it.
If you don't know the English now is a good time to find out.
Also you can prepare a topic to talk about.
It could be anything for example if you've read an interesting book recently find out
how you would talk about that interesting book.
Prehaps you won't need that topic.
But regardless of whether you need it or not, you will feel much better for having something
ready that you can talk about easily if you need it.
It might seem like a lot of trouble to prepare in this way but actually over time you will
find that more and more you don't need prepaeration.
That you don't need to prepare a topic.
Because you will get used to being in this kind of situation.
And things will naturally be much easier and make you feel less nervous.
Something that has always worked very well for me is to set a "nervous stop time".
What does that mean?
Think of it this way You're going to meet a group of people at
12:30 in the afteroon.
Allow yourself the first 30 minutes to feel really nervous don't try to stop yourself
from feeling really nervous.
Just go with it.
But after that 30 minutes is over, at 1:00, at that time you have to stop.
You have to stop feeling nervous and just get on with it.
By allowing yourself to have this 'nervous time', this first 30 minutes it is actually
much easier to get it out of your system.
And to get over it.
So when we reach our stop time at 1:00 you can just forget all about feeling shy and
nervous.
My third tip seems very simple and very basic, but it is somethig which often people fail
to do.
introduce yourself to, or greet, everyone as quickly as you possibly can.
Again, this sounds very basic but actually making the first contact is the hardest part
and the longer you leave it the harder it will be.
So just do it.
Get it done fast.
Make first contact and then after that, things will be much easier.
You can also think of it like this: Everybody is probably feeling the same as
you are that means, if you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about other people
you're actually making yourself much easier them if you introduce yourself quickly.
Also, introduce other people that you know, or that have just met to the new people that
you meet.
This will make it much easier for everyone to join a conversation.
And it will also mean that people will turn to you as a person who they can trust and
talk to easily.
Basically stop thinking about yourself, and start worrying about other people, and things
will be much easier and much smoother.
My forth tip is to be authentic, and true to yourself.
Now, this works two ways.
First of all, don't apologise for yourself.
As an English learner speaking English as a second language it is only natural that
you might make mistakes.
Maybe you will make grammar mistakes.
Maybe you will misunderstand some things which people say.
Maybe they will mistunderstand you.
But it doesn't matter.
Everybody understsand that you are an Englishlearner.
And nobody minds about these mistakes.
So don't feel like you have to apologise for them.
At the same time, don't try to make yourself seem much greater than you are.
When the get nervous, many people will exagerate and boast abou tthe things that they have
done and have achieved.
You don't need to do this.
Be humble.
Be authentic.
Be honest about yourself.
And people will respect you for it.
My fith tip today, and possible the most important, is to talk less and listen more.
Everybody likes to talk about themselves which means for you, if you want to seem like somebody
who is a very good talker, and is very good communicating with people the best thing you
can do is to give them a chance to talk about themselves and to listen with interest.
Instead of talking about things yourself try to find questions to ask.
Ask things to other people, and listen to their answers.
What sort of things should you ask?
It doesn't matter.
Again, the point is simply that people like to talk about themselves.
So think of something.
Thing of anything and ask them that.
Listen and keep the conversation going by asking more questions.
And that is it for today.
So just remember everybody gets nervous.
Everybody gets stage fright.
But it isn't something which has to stop you from doing what you want to do.
Just follow the tips in this video, and soon you'll forget all about feeling nervous.
My question for you today, is do you have any tips of your own for overcoming nervousness
and feeling more confident when speaking to people in English?
If you do, leave us a comment under this video.
And I will see you in the next lesson.