This video has been requested by many learners, so let me share the secret to instant speaking
confidence.
Now, this will be helpful for you whether you are an English learner like most of the
people who watch my channel, or people who just feel nervous in any kind of public speaking
situation.
So I think you're really going to enjoy this video.
Well, I want to talk just a little bit very quickly about the background of this.
This is something I taught to a friend of mine many years ago.
He's a Japanese guy and he was learning English and I was learning Japanese.
We were kind of helping each other, but he had a pretty big problem with confidence,
so he knew quite a lot, but he was always worried about speaking, and he wanted to know
what to do about that.
So this is what I was teaching him, and this is actually, I just kind of drew this on a
piece of paper what I'm going to show to you right now.
Now, the first part of becoming a confident speaker before we even get to how you feel
and expressing yourself, I want to explain something very important about learning and
then actually how you speak, because as you see I've got two different charts here because
these really are two different things.
So let me explain why.
So the first one we're going to call this knowledge.
I'm just going to abbreviate this as know.
So this is the information you know, and we get this by, we're going to have, we're just
going to title this focus over here.
So focus and then we've got time down here.
So the information you know is kind of a product of what you focus on and then how much time
you spend doing that.
Now, I don't call this just study versus time because a lot of people can spend actually
a lot of time studying, but not really have a lot of practical knowledge and certainly
not knowledge for everyday conversations.
So many people will study a lot, they'll spend a lot of time reading textbooks and listening
to, just listening practice lessons, other things like that that are giving them lots
more information but they're not necessarily becoming more confident speakers or even learning
a lot more about how to speak in an everyday situation.
So the first part of this is focus, and I want to really get you to change the way you
think about this.
So it's not like a kind of typical chart where you have your knowledge increases as you spend
more time, because again, some people they can spend actually a lot of time and they
don't really focus on things that actually help you, so they might be down here.
So they've got a lot of time spent learning the language, but because of what they focus
on, they don't have a lot of practical knowledge for good communication in everyday situations.
So these are people who might know a lot for passing a test, but they just don't know a
lot of conversational speech for again, everyday conversations.
So another interesting thing about this chart here about developing knowledge is that when
you're trying to think about what to focus on, it's actually kind of a clever thing to
do.
You can spend a lot less time but focus on the right things and become able to just have
good conversations and at least know the vocabulary that natives are using in everyday situations
without spending a lot of time.
So again, there are different ways to learn.
This video is not about specific ways to learn faster or more efficiently.
I've got lots of videos about that on my channel, but this one specifically is about confidence.
So again, we've got the first chart here, which is knowledge, I sound like Tai Lopez,
knowledge.
Have you seen that video?
I love that video.
Knowledge.
Anyways, we're going to talk about knowledge, but I also want to talk about over here, we've
got speaking, we're going to just abbreviate this as speaking ability.
So the reason these are two different charts here is because these are related, but they're
independent, and this means that you can know a lot, but not be a good speaker, and a lot
of the people who watch my channel are like that.
So maybe you can understand what I'm saying right now, but you can't communicate automatically
because you know a lot, but again, you lack maybe the confidence to speak, you're worried
about your pronunciation, or you're worried about making mistakes.
There are lots of reasons why this happens, but this video is about correcting that.
I know people want me to get to the point right quick, but it's important to understand
this, why a lot of people might know information, but they don't have good speaking ability.
Now, speaking ability is actually a pretty interesting thing.
We're going to label this confidence over here, because that's really what your ability
is.
Your ability to speak, and then you've got you knowledge down here.
Going to abbreviate this again as knowledge.
Knowledge.
Anyway, so we've got confidence up here and what you know.
Now, this is really interesting because your confidence is actually what limits your ability
to speak, and just like this graph, you can see we have someone who spends a lot of time,
but doesn't know enough about actual conversational English to have a good conversation, so they
don't understand slang, and idioms, and other things that people use in everyday situations,
so they struggle to speak.
They don't even have the knowledge, and so in this case they've got maybe just a low
level of knowledge in general, and so maybe that people would be, again you could just
put them up here where they have even like a high level of knowledge, or a low level
of knowledge.
Again, this is from zero and going up this way.
So up here maybe you've got a lot of knowledge, or down here you have not much knowledge at
all, but we have this really low because you have very low confidence.
So what you see here is that even if you know a lot, like you could be up here, you could
have spend the right amount of time where you're learning very efficiently, studying
only the things that are most required for conversations and not spending a lot of time
practicing things that you just won't hear in conversations.
So you're doing that learning very efficiently, so you might know a lot, but again, you're
stuck down here because of your confidence.
So the question become how do we raise this up that way?
So again, this level right here, this is, we call this kind of the confidence ceiling
for your ability to speak.
So you can only go this high, and it doesn't matter, you can keep learning more, and more,
and more, and more, but if you don't raise this, then it doesn't matter.
You won't become a more confident speaker, and this is what I see a lot of students doing.
They're continuing to learn more, they study more, they put more and more time into learning,
but they're not able to increase their confidence, and this is just a part of the cycle of developing
a habit.
So as you're learning, I'll draw one more kind of small chart over here, you've got
kind of improvement over here and then confidence builds from that.
When you get more confident, you want to improve, and so we call this a virtuous cycle, a virtuous
cycle.
So virtue, virtuous meaning positive, and it's a virtuous cycle.
So what happens to a lot of people is that they don't practice, so they don't feel good
and they don't make improvement, and we call this a vicious cycle, a vicious cycle.
So you want the virtuous cycle of you're able to boost your confidence a little bit, you
practice a little bit more, and so this goes up, and ideally, you want to be up here.
So you want to improve, you have a lot of knowledge, and you have a high level of confidence
as well, and so this is where your speaking ability is really good.
So as an example if I'm trying to learn a different language, you can actually tell
some people who don't know very much at all, but just because they're so confident, they
might be over here.
So this is, see, this is really interesting.
You can have almost a different profile for different kinds of learners.
Some people are highly confident, but they don't know much about the language.
So a friend of mine out here in Japan, he might say Konnichiwa or something,
like pronouncing it badly, saying that to everyone and have a lot of confidence about
that, but he can't really have a good conversation.
So he's got a low level of knowledge, but a high level of confidence, and actually these
people are often envied by those who know a lot but don't have the confidence to speak.
So finally we get to the point here, how do we raise this to up here.
So we want to boost this, and the really fantastic thing about what I'm going to tell you right
now is that you can actually improve your confidence basically instantly just by understanding
one thing, and you don't need to learn any more words or phrases to do it.
So even without learning anything new, you can take the information you already know
to improve your confidence, and that will improve your speaking ability.
Does that sound good?
Okay.
So all we're going to do, it's a very simple idea, is to remember, remember your value.
Remember your value.
Make sure you can see that over here.
This is incredibly important, and we're going to look at two examples of this because this
is mostly what people are interested in.
The first one is public speaking, I'll just abbreviate that as PS, and the second one
is just personal communication.
I'll abbreviate that one as well.
So we've got public speaking and then personal communication as well.
Now, in the case of public speaking, let's say you feel very, very nervous about giving
a talk or even a presentation just like this on YouTube, you're nervous about making videos.
Really what's happening is you're forgetting the knowledge that you have, the value that
you have that you can share with other people.
So in my case let's say I think I have something incredibly important to share.
So I believe this is a really important idea that you need to know about, but if I'm too
nervous, then I won't be able to share that knowledge with you.
So I have to remember the value I give, and by remembering the value, I increase the confidence
I have to deliver that value.
I'll give you an even more basic example of this, but imagine someone who's not really
a good swimmer, so they're not very confident about their ability to swim, but they're walking
by a pool and they see a young child.
The young child has fallen into the pool, and they're splashing around.
Now most people, they would very quickly rush in, maybe they have their phone, or their
wallet, or something like that, but they dive in to try to save the child.
So they believe the value they have, the value they bring to the child is more important
than whatever they think about their ability to swim.
Now, most people again, it's a pretty common thing that they would have that situation
and they would believe that idea, but you can apply that same idea to just regular conversations
or regularly delivering value in an everyday way.
So in my situation, actually if you go back to the very beginning of this channel, nearly
10 years ago, wow, it's been a long time.
So nearly 10 years producing videos to help people and hopefully these have been valuable
for you, I think they have been.
Do let me know, do click that like button if this video has been valuable and you have
enjoyed the content, and actually share it with two other people as well.
But when I began making videos, you'll notice they were not videos of me in the camera,
and part of the reason for that is that I was shy.
I was actually shy about getting in front of the camera, and I was worried, okay, what
if I look silly, or something like that, and again, it's because I was not thinking about
the value I could give, and in my case as a person who's helping others learn languages,
it's important actually to see my face.
So when you're seeing how I move my mouth, how I move my body, my expressions, all of
these things are what produce my fluent speech, and so you can watch that a lot more easily
if you can see my face, rather than just seeing some words or something on the screen.
So when I thought about that idea, I said, "You know, I can actually provide a lot more
value, and my value actually goes up."
So I have a lot of knowledge to share about how to help people get fluent, but I needed
to increase my value.
So I had to think about what's the value I provide to people, and certainly as someone
in a public speaking environment, if you have knowledge to share, it's a bad thing to not
share that.
So when you remember that idea, again, to remember your value, it means to think about
how you can help people and why it's important that you communicate the knowledge that you
have.
So this is for public speakers, whether you're speaking English as a native speaker or as
a learner, but anybody who has to make some kind of presentation, whether it's at work
or some family thing, or something else, remember the value that you give, people are most interested
in the value, the information you can provide if you're teaching something, rather than
maybe what you look like, or if you make a mistake, or you have a funny haircut, or something
like that.
Anyway, the second part of this is for personal communication, and this is really more for
people who are especially trying to learn a second language, like most of the people
learning English watching my channel here.
They're thinking about personal communication, and this becomes a big problem for people
because often times they have a lot of knowledge but they think they don't provide much value,
especially if they can't speak.
So we get back to this vicious cycle of people worried, so they're worried about their speaking,
or they think they'll be boring, or that they don't have anything to share, or the conversation
will just end very quickly.
There are lots of reasons for people worrying about this, but again, because of that they
don't want to speak.
So they worry more, they don't speak, they worry more, they don't speak, and so again
it's that vicious cycle.
We want you to have a virtuous cycle where you practice a little bit more, you get better,
you feel more confident, you speak more, and that's how you increase this, so you move
up here.
Does that make sense?
So what you have to do in your situation, let's say you are someone who has a lot of
knowledge, but you're really, really nervous about speaking.
Really the first step is just to get in conversations, and here is the key.
You raise your value, you raise your confidence by remembering, again, remembering your value,
you remember that even just listening is incredibly valuable.
I want you to think about that for a moment because as a language learner, we talk a lot
about speaking and how we can improve our conversational ability and learn more vocabulary,
things like that, but just like when you're communicating with people in your native language,
you still have to listen, and most people don't feel listened to in often just everyday
life, in conversations, that kind of thing, when they're speaking with other people they
feel like most people are just listening, waiting for their turn to speak, but not really
listening to the other person.
So if you feel like you're really being listened to, people are really understanding you, then
that's a very valuable thing.
So people really like being listened to, and so even if you know a lot but you can't speak
a lot, the point first is just to get into conversations.
So tell people, "Hey."
As an example, "I heard you were having a problem with something.
Would you like to talk about it?"
So just asking people, "Is there something I can do to help?"
And really you're just trying to listen.
The point is again, to stimulate, to create, to begin this virtuous cycle of let me get
into a conversation and then suddenly I'm feeling a little bit more confident about
that.
So it begins with just a mental switch.
Wait a minute, if I get into a conversation, and even if I don't speak more than a few
words, that's valuable for the other person.
Remember that, that's valuable.
So in the same way that a person who's teaching or trying to share something, again, it could
be a business situation, or like you're at a church, or some community event, something
like that, you're trying to share information to be valuable to other people.
So whether it's public speaking or personal communication, even if you can't speak very
much, even if you don't know, you begin this virtuous cycle by just entering conversations,
and you do that just really by listening and sharing that moment with other people.
I know when you're thinking about how do I improve my language learning ability, most
of the channels and videos you'll find on YouTube will just give you more of this information
over here.
They're going to continue to grow your knowledge, but this doesn't matter if you can't improve
your confidence.
So you have to break this vicious cycle of stopping yourself from speaking, so you don't
spend time trying to learn more, you can actually stop learning, you can not learn another word
but still become a much better speaker by becoming confident about the things you know
already.
So it begins, especially if you don't have much ability, or have much speaking ability.
If you have a lot of knowledge you can listen to people and that's how you being.
So when you're in conversations with people, don't worry about making mistakes, just think
about listening to the other people.
Think about being valuable and remember your value and that will help you become a much
more confident speaker.
So again, hopefully you've appreciated this.
If you have, do click that like button and share with other people you know who also
struggle with their communication, especially because they lack the confidence to speak.
Well, that's been it for me.
I am Drew Badger, the founder of EnglishAnyone.com and I hope you have enjoyed this video.
Really think about this idea.
You really can instantly improve your confidence if you just remember you value, and this drives
the virtuous cycles, you can destroy the vicious cycle that keeps you learning, but that doesn't
help you become a more confident speaker.
I hope you have enjoyed this video.
Do again click that like button if you have and do these three simple things right now
if you'd like to become a more confident speaker.
One, click on this link to subscribe to my YouTube channel for over 500 free videos.
Two, click on this link to download my number one e-book guide to fast fluency free, and
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