Hi there, I am Drew Badger, The English Fluency Guide, and in this video I'm going to tell
you that you don't need permission to speak. You don't need permission to speak. This is
going to be a very quick video but is an important, it is an important reminder for you out there.
Especially because a lot of people, number one, they are worried about making mistakes
when they speak. And number two, this is another thing I hear even from, especially out here
in Japan because people are always very polite and they're especially trying to not make
mistakes. Is they apologize for what they say or if they make a mistake, they say, "Oh,
I'm sorry for my bad English." Or something like that. So don't say sorry about your English.
Now, this is most important for you and it's slightly less important for other people you're
speaking with. But I'll put another phrase up here in just a second. But this is a very
important idea, because for most of people's lives they are taught to get permission to
do something from a very early age. They have to ask their parents permission to do something.
Like even going to the bathroom at school, you have to say, "Hey, can I go to the toilet?"
You have to ask the teacher's permission. And the opposite of this is that if you make
a mistake, you lose points or you get a bad grade and bad things happen to you. So there
are lots of reasons why people worry about this, but the biggest problem is that it conditions
people. It trains people. It makes people want to kind of apologize and feel nervous
about doing things, especially when they're not very good at them.
Even if many people are very good at something, if they make a mistake, they apologize for
that thing and it really hurts your own confidence to do that. So I'll give you just a quick
example from my own life related to teaching specifically about this. I'll give you actually
a few, we'll see. I want to keep this as a short video, but when I started calling myself
The English Fluency Guide a number of years ago after I was talking with students and
figuring out what's... Kind of like what am I doing exactly that's different. Why is it
successful? Why am I helping people? And I realized I was not like a teacher just focusing
on the rules of the language. I was thinking more like a guide and working with the student
in the same way that a guide would take you through their town or into their home and
show you how things are working rather than focusing on the language, I'm focusing on
the student. Obviously I'm teaching the language, but the
focus is the students. So we learn more about how the student understands things, and then
we can guide the student to where they want to go much more easily that way. We begin
with the student, not the language. And so when I started calling myself this, other
people were saying, "Hey, who told you, you could be the English Fluency Guide? Who told
you you could do that? Who gave you permission to do that?" And at first I thought like,
huh, that's an interesting idea. Nobody has given me permission to do that. And I thought,
well, I don't give a fuck. So I excuse me if young children are watching this, but I
don't care. I don't care if other people have given me permission to say I'm one thing about
whatever. I care about results for my students. So I
didn't want to be a teacher. So I don't care about having credentials like a normal teacher.
Now most people, they're waiting for permission to do something. They're saying, "Well, I
can't teach until I have a degree in something, and then I have to get a master's and a PhD
or whatever." But what I've discovered often a lot of people who have these advanced degrees,
especially in language teaching, they only focus more on the language. And they focus
less on the students. So they know so much about the language. It's amazing. Most language
teachers know way more about the language than I do. But I'm not concerned with a lot
of deep details about those kinds of things, that are mostly going to confuse learners.
So when I thought about that as a guide, instead of trying to be a teacher, I said, "Well I
don't need any permission to do that." And I don't need basically students are saying...
I mean not many but a few people, nobody says that to me now, interestingly. But years ago
when it was a new thing for people, they were saying, "Well who gave you permission? Who
gives you the right to do something like that?" Now the reason I'm bringing this up is because
a lot of people, like non native speakers are thinking, well kind of subconsciously,
even if they don't really think about this or know it, they're thinking to themselves
like, I don't have the right to speak. Or who am I to speak English and try to speak
with other people. And that's why they apologize. So they don't realize they're doing it. They
don't realize why they're doing it. But when people make mistakes in conversations and
I make mistakes and when I'm speaking Japanese, but I don't stop what I'm doing to apologize
for it. Because I have a right to speak Japanese just like anybody else. I might not speak
it as well as a native speaker who's learned it for 50 years, but still, I'm not going
to apologize for that. So let me give you another great quote to remember.
Just an interesting idea. This is always, or here, write it differently, often and people
have... Often. I can't write and think at the same time. Some people will hear me use
this as off-en or often it doesn't really matter. Again, I'm not going to apologize
about that. So often wrong, w-R-O-N-G, but never in doubt.
Often wrong, but never in doubt. So I'm not worried, I'm going to be wrong sometimes.
But you don't see me getting nervous about it and thinking, oh no. A perfect example
of this. I was with some friends of mine and I was at a parking lot at a mall a few years
ago. And we all were done shopping and we went back to look for the car and I said,
"Oh, the car's over here." And the car was not over there. But I had walked in there
and I didn't say sorry or do anything. I just said, "Oh actually the car is over here."
So I was wrong, but I was not in doubt. And my friend who was walking with me, another
guy was also like, he's a smart guy, confident guy. And he was just impressed that I did
that. So even though I was wrong, I wasn't in doubt.
So I wasn't nervous. I wasn't feeling unconfident about that. And this is different. I think
somebody asked me in a video comment on a previous video, about how I developed confidence.
I'll talk more about that maybe in another video. If you'd like to learn more about that,
click on the... Actually just write a comment down below this video if you'd like to learn
more about that. Because I was not very confident at all as a young man, as a child. So anyway,
this idea of often wrong but never in doubt. This is why you see people on television,
especially in business news where you'll have one guy that says, "Hey, the stock market
is going to go up tomorrow." And then another woman says, "Hey, the stock market is going
to go down tomorrow." And most people are wrong. Or the same thing
about a psychic. So someone who's saying, "This will happen tomorrow." And then it doesn't
happen. But nobody cares if you say it with confidence. Everyone forgets about the mistakes
or the times where you were wrong. And so for a language learner, people don't remember
even 20 minutes later that I said some grammar point wrong. They don't care. They only care
if I make a big deal out of it. So if I am often wrong but never in doubt, then I'm going
to feel a lot more confident about speaking. Because so what? I make a mistake, boom. I
just keep on going. Just like I was in the parking lot. I think I didn't know where the
car was two or three different times, but I still, in the end I was like, "Ah, there
it is over there." Then we finally found a car, and the reason
I did that is because nobody else had any other idea anyway. We were all lost. But you
look to the person who feels confident, who is not in doubt, who is not feeling uncertain,
who is not feeling nervous about that. So you don't need to ask for permission and you
don't need to say, "I'm sorry." If you make a mistake. Does that make sense? This is how
you build your confidence. Or it's kind of one of the about building confidence where
it's okay to be wrong. The most important thing is to not be in doubt. So nobody is
perfect all the time, but many people are often in doubt. Does that make sense? Well,
hopefully this idea makes sense to you. Remember you don't have to ask for permission to speak,
and you certainly don't need to ask for forgiveness if you're making a mistake and explaining
that your Japanese, or your English, or your French or whatever is not perfect.
It doesn't matter what language you speak, never be in doubt. People are responding to
the confidence more than what you actually say or do that causes a mistake. Hopefully
that makes sense. It's a very important idea. Remember it, apply it to your learning and
your speaking. And you will become a much more confident, fluent speaker, much faster.
Because you will feel a lot more excited about speaking because you're just focusing on this
part about never being in doubt. All right. Well, if you'd like to learn more about this,
you can start applying these lessons more by clicking on the link in the upper right
of this video or on the link in the description below this video. And you can learn more about
the programs, and how I help people become much more confident speakers, not only these
principles, but also a lot more of the vocabulary that native speakers are actually using. So
click on the link in the upper right, or in the description below this video. And if you'd
like to continue learning what the English Fluency Guide here on YouTube, just do these
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