Are you afraid of speaking your target language? The mere idea of having a
conversation with a native speaker scares the hell out of you? Are you
afraid that people will not understand you or you will not understand them? You
fear that you will make a ton of mistakes? You're scared that people will
laugh at you? hi I'm Luca from LucaLampariello.com and
today we're going to talk about how to overcome the fear of speaking your
target language. Let's get started.. oh and watch the entire video there's a very
cool tip at the very end of this video.
I remember reading somewhere that people prefer dying than speaking in front of a
big crowd. Now, come to think of it kicking the bucket or speaking in front
of a big crowd are actually challenging things and it's kind of rational to be
scared of these things. I for one was and still am a little bit scared of flying..
Kicking the bucket, speaking in front of people, flying.. as you can see there's
rational and irrational fears and like everything else, like every other field
in life, language learning is no exception. We all have our fair share of
fears both rational and irrational when it comes to speaking a language for the
first time. I have been learning 14 languages in my life and I'm still not
confident when it comes to interacting in a language I'm still not good at, be
it interacting in shops or interacting with some people at some language
meeting or interacting with that target language in that target language with
these people, in general. In my language learning experience, and I've been
learning so far 14 languages, I'm still not confident and
I still fear and dread the idea of speaking with native speakers when I'm
still not quite good with the language, for example when I was in Poland and I
had been learning the language for some time I actually preferred speaking English
and speaking Polish - much to the dismay of my friend Richard - and I hate standing
there with a dull face not understanding what people say to you so one piece of advice that
has always worked with me - and I hope is gonna work for you - is to take a moment
maybe 20 minutes 30 minutes and think about the rational and irrational fears
you have towards language learning, and particularly towards speaking a language
for the first time and what you think about it. Make sure that you take a piece
of paper and you jot down these reasons because if you write things and you take
the time to ponder and analyze, it will stay with you and you will understand
much more things that may be a little bit fleeting, that are going
through your head and you didn't exactly take the time to properly analyze them
Please do that, that's the very beginning of your new journey into speaking a
foreign language. Thinking about, dissecting, jotting down your fears is
the first necessary step towards overcoming them but that's not enough.
I think that getting ready before you speak is actually important so how do
you get ready? Well, one thing that you can try to do is to make sure that
you understand the language well. We talk normally about speaking the language,
we focus on getting our point across and sometimes we're a little bit scared of
you know speaking because we think that people are going to think we're dumb or
we can't get our point across, but come to think of it, understanding a language
is the very first step that you have to undertake if you want to feel a little
bit more confident. In fact, a conversation is always bi-directional
if you understand things that are being said to you, you can actually reply and
nowadays with the technology that we have, you can actually surround yourself
with the language 24/7 and understand it and more and more. But the second piece
of advice to get ready to speak is actually to speak, and when I say "speak"
I don't mean necessarily speak with someone I mean you can also talk to
yourself think about the amount of time that you spend talking to yourself and
with yourself in your own mind so we tend to think that people you see a guy
walking down the street speaking to himself you think "oh, they are crazy" but we
do that all the time there's nothing wrong with that and you can do it in
your foreign language. Now, when you speak it though, you need some sort of criteria
to do that you just can't speak for the sake of it for the hell of it okay just
you know mumbling sentences without a direction. Think about what you want to
talk about think about what you like, think about the person you want to talk
to, imagine having an imaginary friend you can talk to about something very
specific, and focus on the essential and on the useful, start formulating
sentences that you think you will use in a conversation in real
life later, because in this way you will be able to get some processes or some
sentences automatic and that will help when it comes to having a real
conversation with a real person. I know I know
I know, it sounds trivial but the best way to overcome your fears is actually
hit them head-on, face them head-on think about the list of fears that you
have jotted down and you have analyzed and think about for a moment if there is
one fear that you had something you were really scared of and then suddenly you
just faced it, do you remember the relief that you felt, the power that you felt in
all of sudden you felt unstoppable, you know that you
finally faced your fear and you said "oh that's not that difficult, it is not as
difficult as I thought", and it's not just relief and again it's a sense of
power that will thrust you forward and then the following thought will be "why
haven't I done this before?" I want you to remember clearly the power that you
felt inside yourself when you suddenly faced something that you thought was
impossible to face. Now you feel unstoppable but there's one more thing
to take into account: the so called perfectionism syndrome. How many times
have you thought before speaking or for a language "I have to sound perfect, I
have to say perfect sentences I have to have perfect grammar perfect
pronunciation". That's the so called perfectionism syndrome. Let me explain
why this perfectionism syndrome gets in the way of your learning, gets in the way
of your speaking with people, gets in the way of getting your grammar right, gets
in the way of getting your pronunciation right. Firs,t we're not perfect, we make
mistakes all the time. We learn through mistakes.
Forget about perfection, that's just an illusion.
Second, every form of growth entails some sort of discomfort. Third, human beings
literally learn through trial and error we try, we mess up, we try again, we keep
learning. That's what kids and adults do it's not the kids are any better they
just don't care. They don't think about it, they just do it. Mess up, learn. Speaking
a foreign language, interacting with native speakers is literally the realm
of the unpredictable, we can't control everything. Actually, we can control
nothing and control is a powerful illusion they chains us instead of
freeing us. All the greatest who have walked and keep walking on this planet
know this, they've leveraged this knowledge to get external results from Kobe Bryant
to Einstein. They did not let mistakes hold them back
they did not recoil in front of challenges, they kept coming at them they
kept learning, they had faith and that's how they succeeded. So there you have it
unfortunately this is the end of the video but I wanted to make a quick
wrap-up before you finish. First, if you want to overcome your fears make sure to
analyze them, jot them down, dissect them, think about why you have them and that's
a very first step towards overcoming these fears. Second, it's important that
you do some sort of preparation and the very first thing that I would do if I
were you would be to improve your listening comprehension because
confidence is connected with how much you can understand before you can speak
Another form of preparation is to start speaking but you don't need to interact
with native speakers, you can just start talking to yourself and third, as trivial
as it may sound, you have to face your fears head-on because that's the fastest
way to understand that your fears were mostly just in your mind. So as promised
here is the extra tip I told you that one of the best ways you can face your
fears is to face them head-on and in this case to start speaking with a
native speaker but how to do that? So, I would avoid throwing yourself out there
trying to speak the language in as many situations as possible because for most
of you it can actually be stressful what I suggest is that you do things
progressively. So, first and foremost, choose a nice and quiet environment, it
could be your own place, it could be a cafe. Second thing is to choose a person
you like. You can find them on the internet or you can find them somewhere
at a language exchange or in your own city but it's important that
it's a nice person you want to talk to and third, make sure that it's not they
we're going to decide what to talk about it's YOU, YOU are going to talk about
what YOU want, and that will make all the difference. A combination of a quiet
environment, a nice person and your will and your willingness of talking
about something you like will make all the difference and once you do that you
will realize that that's your first small victory within the speaking
foreign language world and then this will help you to get things to the next
stage. Okay unfortunately this is the very end of the video I hope you liked
it and if you want to know more click on the link in the description box you will
find a lot more information I have written an article that you can read and
listen to talk to. Talk to you very soon on YouTube, bye!