All right. Students, students, please listen up. Today's lesson:
how to speak English without mistakes.
In today's lesson, I'm going to teach you the secret to speaking English without mistakes.
Never again you'll have to fear making mistakes when you speak English. This is an easy and quick
tip you can start right now. Are you ready?
The secret to speaking English without mistakes is...
DON'T SPEAK!
That’s it. See you next time!
What's up, RealLifers? I'm Ethan, your RealLife Fluency Coach
and today I'm here to tell you that there is NO way to speak English without mistakes. Sorry!
But, wait! Don't go just yet. I'm going to help you understand and overcome the fear that has been
stopping you from speaking English, right now, regardless of how long you have been studying.
Imagine yourself doing this right now! If you learn a language but can't speak it because you
are too worried about speaking it perfectly, you won't be able to achieve those objectives.
I invite you to join our community because just like Ala you'll be able to actually
use the vocabulary you have worked so hard to learn AND speak more clearly.
Hit the subscribe button and the bell down below now so you don’t miss a single lesson.
So now, let me show you what I'm talking about.
I have a question, how can we speak without making mistakes?
"How do I speak English without mistakes?" is the 7-word question
that I get asked quite often and that has always intrigued me.
And for most people who ask me this,
they usually expect that I help them with some sort of ready-made formula,
quick hack, or even a big secret to overnight fluency. Everyone wants a magic pill.
Well, I'm here today to say that the answer to that question is very simple:
You HAVE to make LOTS and LOTS of mistakes!
When it comes to the challenge of learning a new language,
the idea of achieving perfection is unattainable!
and honestly, I think that's a bad goal to have.
None of us are going to be perfect... Ever. So, by doing that, you'll be
spending your time and energy pursuing a goal that is nearly impossible to achieve!
I have learned 6 foreign languages. And just the other day I was reflecting on the years
I spent learning all of those languages. For each of them, I faced a different challenge.
When I first started learning German, I couldn't figure out its pronunciation.
For Spanish, I got stuck on the grammar rules.
With French, my accent was horrendous, but there was one thing in common about them:
I always put myself out there and spoke!
For Hebrew, I did a 90-day challenge
where I had to go from zero knowledge to being able to have a 15-minute conversation.
It was pretty rocky. But I did it!
Why am I telling you all of this? Because mistakes are part of the learning process!
Now, let me ask you a question. why do you fear making mistakes?
Think about it for a second, do your mistakes really prevent you from being able to communicate?
You have to make mistakes to not make mistakes.
What?
We grow up usually seeing the final product of a person's accomplishment,
not the path someone took. You see amazing soccer players like Messi
breaking records, watch Michael Jordan never miss a shot,
or Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, and Beyonce winning all the possible music awards of the industry.
What you don't see are the endless hours of training,
the thousand missed shots, and the bucket filled with dozens of crumpled pieces of paper.
That's why we feel "programmed" to feel like we can achieve said
"perfection" at the drop of a hat. I can't stress enough how aiming at this is unrealistic!
As a human being, you're going to make mistakes!
I want you to think of ONE goal you want to accomplish with your English. However, your
answer cannot be "speak perfect English", "sound like a native" or "speak English without mistakes"
The only person capable of deciding your goals, objectives, and purpose in learning the language
is YOU, But if I were to give you some advice, I'd say aim at becoming a confident speaker!
Before diving into how you can start doing that right now, I want to let
you know that one of the best ways to build up confidence and start using YOUR English
right now is by becoming part of our community in which you'll feel safe to make mistakes,
use English in Real Life and boost fluency to become an advanced English Speaker. Does that
sound like something that you want to do? We want to invite you to be part of our Fluency Circle -
the community of the Native Immersion Course. Now in this course you will learn the
three keys to understanding fast speech, vocabulary, pronunciation
and cultural context. And now with the release of our RealLife App you can put everything
that you learn in the course to practice with other learners from around the world.
You can try it for FREE with our Power Learning Mini Course.
Learn more and sign up clicking up here or down in the description box below.
Back to the topic, we've been discussing, let's take a look at these three sentences.
Decide if they are TRUE or FALSE.
The first misconception about learning a new language is that natives speak it perfectly.
No one is perfect.
Just the other day I was scrolling my Instagram feed and saw this post by Demi Lovato.
She clearly confused your with you're because
they have the exact same pronunciation. Natives make this mistake ALL THE TIME.
Another example is Joey's famous catchphrase in Friends 'How you doin?" which is technically
incorrect since if we followed the norm it'd be "How are you doing?" However,
this way of saying became so iconic in the show that lots of people use it nowadays.
And take the poetic license of songs that sometimes mirror real-life mistakes,
for example. Justin Timberlake sang "When you cheated, my heart bleeded.",
but we know the correct form is bled. Lady Gaga said "You and me could write a bad romance"
when we learn time after time that it should be "You and I". Or the classic Rolling Stones'
"I can't get no satisfaction" when it should be "I can't get any satisfaction"
Language is flexible and alive and the grammar rules are bent all the time. Think about it. When
you speak your native language, do you ever say things that are technically incorrect? And when
you do, do you get stressed out about it? Does it make you never want to open your mouth again?
If you want to learn more about this I
recommend you check out this lesson right after you finish this one.
So I've recently recorded a podcast with Rachel from Rachel's English
and she said something really interesting about mistakes.
I mean I would say it all boils down to your goals and your communication and if you
find that your goal is to be understood and you are even with some of these mistakes, then
I don't think it matters. I think it only matters if it matters to you.
Stop apologizing, the thing is people who speak English fluently (be it a
native or just a proficient speaker) will notice your mistakes but they won't care.
As long as you can be understood mistakes, which are usually small, will be irrelevant.
Now, we've made a video entirely on this topic that I'll link down below for you to watch next.
So as we've seen in this lesson there's no perfect solution to completely
avoid mistakes in English. So embrace them! Even if you fall on your face,
step back and recognize your mistakes for what they are: your guide to English fluency.
Now that means that you've got the courage to try and get feedback and learn from your experience.
Trust me this will fuel you to develop the skills that you need to communicate. When you're so
focused on doing everything perfectly you will always be afraid to try new things, it will
stop you from progressing and growing because you'll be crippled by your fear of failure.
Now here at RealLife we believe in "connection over perfection,"
so by not focusing on being perfect you will be more open, confident and have more
opportunities to develop your language abilities and meaningful relationships through your English.
Last thing, if you want to keep learning be sure to run over to our Instagram because I have some
bonus tips for you there on identifying what are the mistakes that actually prevent communication.
So also make sure that you follow us there to be informed of the lessons we publish every day.
That's right, every day we have different lessons on all of our channels, podcasts and on Instagram.
No excuses not to make English a part of your life today. Aww yeah!!