Eat Sleep Dreamers welcome back to another lesson with me Tom. Today we're looking at
how to become a more confident English speaker. Now this is part two of my series. If you
haven't seen part one, go and check it out right now. The link is just above. In that
video there are four super useful techniques and tips to help you become a more confident
English speaker. If you have seen it and you are ready for four more super useful tips,
stay tuned!
Next idea is to get a language exchange. In Spain we used to call this an Intercambio.
So it's someone, it's like a language partner. It's someone who wants to learn your language
and you want to learn their language and so you spend maybe an hour together and half
an hour you speak in their language and half an hour you speak in your language. And during
that conversation you might help them with some language tips. You might help their grammar,
their vocabulary but generally it's a relaxed situation in which you can practise your English.
Now the reason why i think it's great is that it's a fantastic confidence booster because
there's no pressure. it's just you and this other person. You can make mistakes and they
will hopefully be very supportive and either correct you or they won't mind and they'll
let you carry on talking. So hopefully this will be a situation you feel very comfortable
in and that you will feel more comfortable the longer that you do it with this person.
They will be supportive, they'll be friendly and hopefully together you can support each
other to improve their language skills. Now because it's just the two of you, you can
kind of decide what language you want to practise. So if you want to rehearse for example a restaurant
situation then you can ask them to do that. if you want to rehearse a job interview, you
can ask them to do that. So it's kind of, you dictate what language you practise and
that again a really nice thing to be able to do. You are in control of this situation.
Plus you also get to make a friend because there's a lot of support and you are both
very vulnerable speaking the other language so it's a nice way to get to know someone,
become friends and also maybe to get to know more about their culture and their country.
Yeah, there's loads of benefits to intercambios or language exchanges.
If you are really really really low on confidence I suggest putting yourself in controlled situations
in which you know you can win. And by that I mean you can succeed in communicating what
you want. So for example when I first moved to Spain and I had been in Spain for three
weeks.I couldn't speak any Spanish but I did know some vocabulary for fruit and vegetables.
I would make sure that when I went in to the fruit and vegetable store, into the grocer's,
that this was my moment to shine. I knew that I would, in this situation be able to communicate
everything I wanted so I was able to say what I wanted, the fruit or the vegetables and
able to say thank you and maybe even ask a question. And I'd go there in the morning
so that at the beginning of my day I knew that i would have one successful communication
that gave me confidence that went on for the rest of the day. Now maybe later on in the
day I was in a situation where i could not speak Spanish and it was terrible and embarrassing
but at least I had that one moment in that day where i knew, I'm going to be ok here.
I'm going to successfully communicate with someone in Spanish and that's going to give
me a little boost and I'm going to feel good for the rest of the day. Whatever the situation
is just have a little win, get a little small win where you successfully communicate and
then you can go from there.
Then following on from that the idea of changing your English routines. So let's go back to
our coffee situation. So if you go in to a coffee shop and this is a controlled situation,
you are prepared, you know every day you go in and you order your cappuccino, fantastic.
So then to develop, to start building further confidence what would be a great idea is to
stay in that situation but add one more thing to your conversation. So instead of ordering
a cappuccino order a latte or an espresso. So you are changing one thing, so it's controlled,
you are in the situation you feel comfortable but you are changing one thing. So you are
being a bit flexible. Or maybe you want to order your cappuccino but you then ask a question
to the barista. So you say 'How's your day going?' alright and that might just trigger
a little conversation that you can engage with but you haven't gone out of your controlled
situation. You are still feeling comfortable where you are in this coffee shop, in this
kind of environment. So it's adding a little extra each day to your English routines. So
building up a conversation. You can start small and then start to build in extra phrases,
extra questions as you go and each time your confidence will be a little more. So that's
a nice one change up your daily English routine, add one more extra thing each day.
And my final tip is to focus on vocabulary over grammar. Now that might seem a little
strange to some of you but let's put it into a sentence so if I said to you 'I go shopping
yesterday.' You probably can understand what I'm trying to say. Alright, so there's a grammatical
mistake I go shopping yesterday well if it's yesterday, I went shopping yesterday. Alright,
but you know there's a grammatical mistake because you get the idea, you get the concept
that it was shopping, it was yesterday, I so yeah you could figure it out. However,
if I said to you 'I went shipping yesterday.' Shipping? You went shipping yesterday? what
does that...shipping...to go shipping? Is that a verb. You would be very confused. Now
there it was a vocabulary mistake, not shipping but shopping. Ok, so the meaning is completely
strange. You would have a very difficult time understanding what I was talking about and
that's all down to the vocabulary. So when there's a grammatical mistake usually we can
figure it out, we can try and understand what the meaning was. But if there is a vocabulary
mistake, meaning is completely lost. So if you are going to stay in a hotel in an English
speaking country maybe you need to learn things like 'check in' 'check out' 'room service'
'bed' 'tv' 'bathroom' all those kinds of words. That kind of vocabulary is really going to
help you and support you when you are trying to communicate with the people working in
the hotel. The grammar, of course is helpful, of course it's helpful but with the vocabulary
you'll have such an advantage when you are communicating. So think about your vocabulary,
think about the situation that you are going to use it in and focus on that.
Alright I'm going to finish this lesson up with one last thought. And that is something
that I've repeated many many times on Eat Sleep Dream English and that is... Don't be
afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are beautiful. I love mistakes because they show us the area
that we need to improve. we all make mistakes, native speakers make grammatical mistakes,
vocabulary mistakes all the time. I know with my English, I make so many mistakes, of course
because our brains are trying to catch up with our mouths and it's chaos, sometimes.
But that's ok. It's absolutely fine to make mistakes. You're not expected to speak perfectly.
You are not a newsreader. If you are a newsreader, yeah maybe you want to have perfect English
but we aren't. None of us are newsreaders, we are all just trying to communicate our
ideas, our thoughts and so we are going to make mistakes. So don't fear your mistakes
because that will stop you from communicating. We must focus on communicating, it doesn't
have to be communicating perfectly. We just need to communicate our ideas and our thoughts.
If we make a mistake, doesn't matter. As long as the other person understood what I want
to say, I'm happy. i don't mind. So focus on your fluency, focus on communicating your
ideas rather than on the mistakes, mistakes we all make them.
Alright, I want to hear from you guy. What do you think about the ideas that I've mentioned
here? Do you agree with some of the strategies and techniques that I have suggested here?
Have you used any of these techniques? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to
hear and also I would love you to share your ideas and thoughts because this is an English
language learning community and your ideas are so important to share with everybody else.
So please please do in the comments below. Remember guys I've got new lessons every Tuesday
and every Friday helping you take your English to the next level. This is Tom, the chief
dreamer, saying goodbye.