Hi I'm Anne Marie with Speak Confident English and welcome to this week's
newest lesson. This is of course where you want to be every week if your goal
is to communicate with confidence. This week we're focused on five mistakes you
might be making and if you are they can hurt your fluency and your confidence in
English. So of course we want to stop making those mistakes and we want to do
something a little bit different so that you can start making progress. So if you
feel like you are doing everything right - you are practicing grammar and trying to
learn new vocabulary, maybe you're listening to podcasts and reading
English online, you're reading newspapers watching movies and TV shows, if you're
doing all those things and nothing is working or maybe you really want to be
fluent in English but you just can't find the time right now or you're
worried that maybe you're just not good at learning English, you just can't be
fluent you're never going to be confident like someone else, if any of
those sound like you then today's lesson is a hundred percent for you because you
might be making some mistakes that make you feel that way. And the truth is you
can absolutely become fluent and confident in English. This is what I do
every day and I work with students who like you felt that it was impossible.
They thought they were doing everything right and nothing was working for them.
Now before we get started with the first mistake you might be making I want to
tell you that today's lesson might include a little bit of tough love. When
we talk about giving someone tough love in English what we mean is that we might
say or do something that seems strict or too strong
maybe it's harsh, it's something you don't want to hear but we say it because
we want to help you. I'm going to say some things because I want to see you
succeed I don't want you to stay stuck, I don't want you to feel frustrated, I
don't want you to give up on English. I want you to be successful so I'm going
to share a little bit of tough love with you but I'm also going to help you find
solutions so that you can stop making these mistakes and start making real
progress. Mistake number one is doing this same old thing again and again in
English and when I say same old thing what I mean is that you're doing the
same things you did when you first started to learn English -
you probably started with a grammar book in a classroom and you did grammar
activities. You learned rules and you memorized lists of words. All of those
things are great as a beginner English learner. You have to create a foundation
of course you need to understand grammar rules and you need vocabulary to get
started but as you make progress as you advance you need to change how you learn
and use English. If your goal is fluency and confidence, those don't come from a
grammar book and they don't come from memorizing lists of words. I get a lot of
emails with questions like, Anne Marie do you have a grammar book to recommend to
help me speak English better or Anne Marie what vocabulary do I need to speak
fluently and the truth is it's not grammar or
vocabulary. It is speaking and practice speaking that will help you become
fluent and confident. So if you're waiting to buy the new best grammar book
or if you're wondering what vocabulary to learn so that you can communicate
fluently, I want to tell you that the real answer is learning to use English.
So let's try a new way to do that. The first thing I want you to do is put away
your grammar book. Yes grammar is important but we're going
to start looking at how grammar is used in real life so what I would recommend
is that you choose a blog that you're interested in reading in English or
listen to a podcast (if you need help I have a great lesson on eleven fantastic
podcasts to listen to in English). So the first step is choosing something to read
or listen to in English and that will help you see how we use grammar in real
life and then the next step, the more important step, is talk about it. You can
talk about it with a friend or maybe someone that you work with or if you
have no one to practice with you can even practice by yourself. In fact right
now I have a free audio training that you can download where I share three
strategies to develop the courage and confidence to say what you want in
English and in those strategies I talk about things that you can do on your own
to practice speaking so you can use those to help you begin to use English
in your real life you're improving your listening, you're
reading, you're learning to understand how we use grammar and vocabulary in
real life and then you're immediately speaking. You're practicing it. You're
using it and that's how you begin to make progress on your fluency and
confidence. Mistake number two is closely related it's I'm doing everything but
nothing is working so maybe you are already reading blogs and
you're listening to podcasts you watch movies and TV shows you read newspapers
and yes you still do grammar activities and vocabulary activities you're doing
everything but nothing is working. I get so many emails and questions about this
because it's really frustrating to spend a lot of time on English and then still
feel nervous and shy or worried when you speak. When I get questions like this I
often say you are doing everything but are you speaking? One of the things I
notice when I see lists of everything you're doing - there's one thing that's
missing. It's speaking. I don't see anything like I'm speaking with my
friends at work or I practice speaking at lunch every day with my colleagues
and that is the key. All of those other things are fantastic and they are
absolutely essential to helping you improve your listening, your reading
skills, growing your vocabulary, learning how native speakers communicate and
different accents, and pronunciation but if you're not speaking you can't grow
your fluency and build your confidence. I want to use an example for you think
about when you first learned to ride a bike
you probably didn't read a lot of books about riding a bike
you probably didn't learn all the rules of a bike or the mechanics of how a bike
works. You didn't watch other people and then immediately get on a bike and ride
it successfully. Instead, one day someone helped you get on a bike and you were
probably super nervous. If you were like me you were off-balance and you
immediately fell over and maybe that fall was painful and you thought why am
I doing this? It's crazy! But you really wanted to learn to
ride a bike. Someone was there to help you, they picked you up, they encouraged
you, supported you so you got on the bike again you tried it. You did it. You moved
your legs and you balanced on the bike maybe you fell again and each time it
was less painful less difficult and it was easier to keep going forward that is
exactly how fluency works. And that is what happens when you begin practicing
speaking. It is hard at first. It's challenging and you might make some
mistakes but it's important to keep going forward and the key is that you're
speaking. Now if you are a really shy and nervous English speaker this is the
hardest part - the idea of making a mistake is terrifying
it's the one thing you don't want to do so what I recommend is that you make
sure you find someone - a friend a colleague a teacher - that you are
comfortable with, someone that makes you feel comfortable
that supports you and helps you go forward. That is who you want to practice
speaking with now. You might think Anne Marie this all sounds great but I
have no one to practice with, no one near me speaks English. There are a couple of
suggestions that I have for you. One you could try to find a language partner
online it is a challenge to do that but there are many websites or you could try
something like meetup.com which is a place where people who have similar
interests get together and maybe there is an English-speaking group near you. If
you're not ready to practice speaking with someone you can do some activities
on your own that will help you make progress. Again I have that free download
that you can listen to and learn those strategies that you can work on by
yourself and still make progress in your fluency and confidence. And my third
recommendation is invest in yourself, invest in your
English. If it's important to you, if you have a dream that you want to accomplish
and you need English to do that, invest in it. Find a teacher, a class that you
can take that will give you the speaking practice that you need. Not another
grammar class, not a bunch of vocabulary. You need someone that is going to give
you speaking and feedback. In fact that is exactly what my Fluency School course
is all about. Fluency School was specifically designed for shy English
speakers who want to practice speaking and who want to do it in a really
friendly, supportive, and motivating community. So if it's important to you
then, investing in what you want is also a fantastic option. The third mistake
that I often see is focusing on the negative,
believing that you can't. When nothing works and you're feeling stuck after
years and years of study you start to think that you just can't speak English
maybe other people can be fluent but you can't, you're just not good at learning
languages, you can understand English you just can't speak it. Negativity is
powerful. Negative thoughts make us feel unhappy, stressed, and unsatisfied. When we
focus on the negative it often leads us to feeling afraid and ultimately to
giving up but I want you to think about those negative thoughts a little
differently. Of course there is a lot of advice online that says turn negative
thoughts into positive ones and I don't agree a hundred percent because the
truth might be that you can't speak English fluently - yet. It might be true
that you're not confident in English - yet. It might be true that you don't have a
high level of vocabulary or you can't speak like someone else does in English
- yet. Did you notice that keyword that I used again and again? The word yet. The
word yet means up to now or at this point but it also gives us the hope and
the feeling that it can change it might change tomorrow, it might change next
week. If we work on it we can make progress, there is the opportunity to
reach our goal. So what I want you to do is to start focusing on the power of yet
instead of thinking I can't and if you're thinking but I don't know what to
do, I don't know how to take a step or make progress, my big hint is follow the
tips that I'm giving you today, whether it's finding a language partner, doing an
activity where you listen to a podcast and then practice speaking about it ,you
can use the strategies in my free audio download or maybe investing in a class
and we'll talk about a few more strategies as we go but all of those are
great steps to take that mean you are beginning to practice speaking in
English which will help you reach your goal of being fluent and confident. The
fourth mistake that I often see is believing that you don't have time.
Remember earlier in this video I said I might give you a little bit of tough
love today and this is where I'm going to do it. I often hear people say I
really want to be fluent I just can't find time or I don't have time. And it's
true that when we want to accomplish something we have to commit to it, we
have to work on it and that takes some of our time. It might be running a
marathon, participating in a competition, learning to play the piano, joining a
choir. It might be losing weight and getting fit. Those do require daily effort and
fluency confidence in English are the same. It
does require daily effort, it requires some of your time. Now it doesn't have to
be hours of time every day, it doesn't have to take over your life. It might be
five minutes on Mondays and 20 minutes on Tuesdays but here is the tough love,
here's the truth: it's not that you don't have time or you can't find the time. The
truth is you won't. You want to become fluent in English but you won't wake up
earlier than normal to do a little bit of studying. You want to be fluent in
English but you won't practice speaking with your colleague during lunch. You
want to be fluent in English but you won't make time in the evening to
practice. That's the tough love. The truth is we make choices about our time and we
make choices about our priorities. Now it might be true that right now you do want
to be fluent but it's not a priority. You won't wake up earlier to do it or you
won't find time in the evening and that is absolutely okay. There's nothing right
or wrong about your priorities but it's really important to be honest about them.
And here's why it's important: if we only believe that I can't, I can't find the
time, then we get frustrated and upset when something doesn't work or it
doesn't happen fast enough, so we start to believe that it's not possible for us,
that no strategy will work for us but that's not true.
You absolutely can become confident in English, you absolutely can become fluent
but it does mean giving time every day and it means speaking practice, it means
that you are using the language, it means that you create time
in your day for it, it becomes a priority. And I can tell you that the students who
are most successful in English, this is what makes them different, this is what
they do. They find time in their day for English. They create space for it and
again it might be five minutes on Monday while they walk the dog, on Tuesdays
maybe it's joining me for a class, and on Wednesdays they listen to a podcast on
the way to work and then they talk about it a little bit but every day they're
doing something in English and that is the key.
And finally mistake number five that I want you to avoid a hundred percent is
giving up. If you are making the other mistakes we've talked about then of
course you would feel discouraged and frustrated and you'll think it's just
not possible, but if you give up on your goal of being fluent and confident in
English it probably means that you're giving up something more. It might mean
giving up your hope for a promotion at your company or it might mean giving up
your hope for the most amazing dream job in English. It might mean giving up your
goal to go study abroad or it might be giving up the hope that you can feel
comfortable in English where you live and start to make friends and
communicate easily every day. And I don't want you to give up any of that. The
truth is fluency is a process, it's something that happens over time as you
commit, as you take steps forward every day that frustration begins to go away
and you get stuck less and less often. You stop losing words and you start
finding the words that you need when you want to say them. It becomes less scary
to start a conversation with some and to participate in a discussion at
work. But all of that only happens when you do everything else we've talked
about today: you start focusing on using English and you find ways to learn real
English - for example reading blogs or listening to podcasts and then you
practice talking about it (when you do that you immediately use the grammar and
vocabulary you've just learned). It means doing something every day in your
English and if necessary investing in it, giving yourself the opportunity to work
with a teacher, to participate in a class that is going to focus on your speaking.
So of course the solution to mistake number five is don't give up on your
English. That's much easier to say than it is to do. Not giving up means being
courageous, it might mean taking some risks,
it means practicing speaking and doing it every day but if it's your priority,
if it's something you really want to accomplish, then I know you can do it and
I know that you can find time in your day for English. Now if you're still here
and listening I'm thrilled that you are, this is a longer lesson than normal but
it also tells me you might be making one of those mistakes and you're ready to
stop making it so that you can begin making progress. So here is my challenge
question for you today and you can share your answer in the comments just below
the video or in the comment section of the online
lesson - if you've been making one of these mistakes, if you've felt frustrated
that you're doing everything you can but maybe you're not practicing speaking or
if you're ready to try something new, then I want to know about it. I want to
know what step you're going to take today and what you're going to do
tomorrow to help you reach your goals in English. I would love for you to share
that with me so that I can encourage you and support
you in that goal. So take a couple of moments today and share that with me in
the comment section. If you enjoyed this video please be sure to give it a thumbs
up on YouTube, subscribe to this YouTube channel, and share it on Facebook. With
that thank you so much for joining me this week and I look forward to seeing
you next Wednesday for your Confident English lesson.