Hi there. I'm Drew Badger, the founder of EnglishAnyone.com, and in this video, I'd
like to help you have your very first conversation. Now, if you've already been having conversations
with people, that's fantastic. You will probably learn some interesting new vocabulary you
can use in your conversations. But this video in particular, is really specifically for
people who are still feeling very nervous but they want to speak. Maybe they have chances
to speak, but they just don't take those chances, so I have some learners, I get lots of emails
from people about they have to communicate with people at their work, or maybe they have
to give a presentation, or talking to customers and clients, or they have to just in everyday
situations where they're talking with maybe the teacher of their children at school and
they have to communicate with them, or just people at a party, or all kinds of situations
where in, as a native speaker, you wouldn't even think about these things.
I would go talk to my child's teachers at school and have no problem. But this situation
can be incredibly frustrating and really scary for a lot of people, so I wanted to talk about
how to have your first conversation, and really what I was doing because I struggled with
this a lot. I'll just tell a few stories about this from when I was learning. I came to Japan
in 2003, to study Japanese gardening, if you didn't know that already about me. I was incredibly
shy about speaking because I didn't know any Japanese when I got here. I knew just a few
written characters that I had practiced, but I did not know anything other than konnichiwa
and I couldn't even say that very well. I remember the first time I had to give a self-introduction
here in Japan, I was working as a teacher in a school, and I had to go to the Board
of Education and stand in front of maybe 50 people, just regular office workers were there
just working at the Board of Education. Everyone is staring at me, and I'm looking
around, and I had practiced this speech. I was, "My name is Drew, and I'm from America,
and I like gardening". I said something basically like that. But I remember I, it's almost like
my brain or my words just kind of disappeared. I think, maybe I said something, but my mind
was almost in a different place, like it was trying to escape the situation. Maybe you've
had a situation similar to that. But when I was standing there in front of these people
feeling really nervous and shy about that, I was so excited. I was just thinking like,
please, I want this to be over. I want this to be over. After it was finished, I can see
people smiling at me, some people laughing because I've made some mistakes.
That was a pretty challenging situation for me. Usually I'm just fine speaking English
in front of people because that's my native language. But of course, when you're moving
to a new place and you have to give a speech, it can be frustrating and challenging and
very scary for people, even in their native language to stand in front of a group of people
and speak. I have no problem doing that now, but it took a lot of practice for me to get
there, especially in Japanese. Now, another situation, this is another weird thing I did,
but I was really nervous about taking taxis or taking buses in Japan. I was worried about
doing these things because it was really confusing. I didn't know how to get from one place to
the other because I would look at the bus, and it was all characters in Japanese, and
so I couldn't read anything, and I was too scared to talk to the driver or to ask anybody.
I only took trains or walked everywhere, so I knew what the train was. I could look, okay,
the name was written in English. I knew the train is only going one direction and it has
just a few stops that I know where to get off and I don't have to speak to anyone. I
was really nervous and I definitely ignored, well not really ignored, I guess I would say
I avoided lots of speaking situations, and I know a lot of my students do that too. Here's
what I did to overcome that, and I think this'll be helpful for a lot of people, even just
if you want to have more practice. Especially if you have a situation where you need to
communicate with people or you just maybe see people around and you have chances to
speak but you don't take them. Then, maybe after that's finished you have,
like I talked in previous video about negative self-talk, so you feel frustrated with yourself.
"Why didn't I take that opportunity? I knew I should have said something to that person.
It would've been a great opportunity to practice my English, but I didn't." You lose an opportunity
and then you feel a little bit bad about that. To overcome this, the thing that I found was
most helpful for me, was talking to complete strangers. Now, the reason I decided to do
this is because I knew I wouldn't have to be in a situation for them or a situation
with them for very long. So, actually I got a almost kind of too friendly with people.
Walking around my neighborhood, I would be out. I just started saying hello to everyone
I could find, and I actually teach this to my daughter now, or I will. Both of my daughters,
my younger daughter's still just one year old, but my older daughter now, she walks
around and she says hello to people and they're always surprised.
They say, "Oh," and usually they say hello back. Some people do not, and she always says,
"Hey, they didn't say hello back to me". I say, "Well, sometimes people are not going
to say hello, but it's important for you to continue doing that". Again, the reason I
teach her to do this is because I want her to not be shy about using her voice in public,
whether it's in Japanese or English. We say hello sometimes or just konnichiwa or whatever,
to people. But, if you're in a situation where you can just say hello to someone, even that
little, just a quick hello or nice weather or something like that, if you have that opportunity,
that's going to be your real chance to develop a conversation. Even if nothing happens from
that, you will not see that person again likely, and you don't have to worry about that.
What's interesting is that people often feel the most nervous when they're around the people
who are most important to them. It's interesting. Even now for me, my Japanese is really good
when I'm just talking to people I don't know. But if I'm at home with my wife, it changes
my brain a little bit. Has that ever happened to you, where you have to talk when you're
around your friends or people you know, you care more about what they think. It's going
to be a greater, maybe feeling, if you're feeling a bit nervous about that. Because
you care more about these people, you care more what they think about you. That changes
the way you think and it will also change the way you speak. Use that understanding
to go out and start practicing with people you don't know.
This is why, when I often get mails from people, they're doing customer service or they work
at a hotel or something, I say these jobs are perfect for people who want to improve
their English because you're getting new customers that come in, new clients, new people, new
guests, and all of these people are going to give you the chance to say something, maybe
even just one phrase that you can practice again and again with all these different people.
None of them will know that you said the same thing to 20 other people. Now, there's actually
a funny episode of the Simpsons where this happens. There is Bart and Homer. These are
the two main characters or the father and son part of the Simpson's family and they
are at an auto show. This is a place where you can see lots of cars.
There's usually attractive women, beautiful women with maybe bathing suits or something
on. They have some really nice clothing, revealing clothing, so you can see something. The woman
will be draped over the car. This is a really great expression in English too, to be draped
over something. If you think about drapes, I've got some curtains behind me over here.
This is the studio where I record, and people actually come do ballet and things like that.
There's a giant mirror behind that. Anyway, to be draped over a car, usually you have
some new car, and then you have the beautiful woman lying down on top of it. They show a
scene where a man walks up and he says, "Oh, do you come with the car?" Then the woman
laughs. She says, "Oh you". Then the next guy comes up, he says, "Oh, do you come with
the car?" She says, "Oh you." It's really interesting
to see people just, they don't realize it's not really being clever. That woman has heard
that phrase from hundreds of men probably even in that same day, but to each individual
guy, he thinks he's being clever. Anyway, that's just a side little story there. But
I hope it proves that point, where if you're in a situation where you can talk to people
you don't know, the people you don't know are going to be a lot better for you, for
practicing your English and for being able to improve because you're not feeling so nervous
about what they think. Use that as an opportunity to get your first conversation in, even if
it's just saying hello or nice weather we're having or got the time? Instead of saying,
"Do you have the time?" you can say "Got the time?", like asking someone if they've got
the time. Or if you smoke, another great way to meet people actually is just asking people
if they have a light. You can say, "Got a light? Got a light?" Like a cigarette lighter,
got a light? You can talk to other people who are standing
outside, and usually smokers are happy to talk with somebody else who's standing there.
But it could be just a good opportunity for you to say hello, just to practice your English.
This will build your confidence so you can start saying more things, and then you can
practice things that you come back and use that, those expressions with the people who
you do care a lot more about and that you see more often. So, if you're feeling nervous
about that, if you have lots of opportunities where you get to maybe say hello to someone,
you see a native speaker or you have some opportunity, just take that opportunity and
say hello. It's really easy when you just begin something. I know one of my students
sent me a mail, his name is Kevin, great student of mine, so he was really worried about speaking.
He had actually lived in Ireland for a while, and he didn't improve his speaking at all,
even though he was surrounded by native speakers for three months. He was from France. He came
back and he decided to go to Australia, or maybe it was New Zealand. Now I forget. One
of those two countries. But, he went down there and he realized the stuff I'm talking
about, about mindset is really important. It's not just the vocabulary habits. How you
think also, because if you know a lot but you're too scared to speak, then all of that
vocabulary won't matter. They won't help you do anything. He decided on a plane, he was
just going to turn to the person next to him and say, how are you?
Just a really simple way of getting a conversation started. Then he said he had the longest English
conversation he'd ever had. That was amazing. Again, just because he was thinking about,
not like kind of worrying about that, about how am I going to feel or what if they laugh
at me or something like that? He cared enough to ask how the other person was doing and
that's a surprising thing, and people are saying, "Oh well, yeah, I'm doing all right.
Then, the conversation begins from there. To have your first conversation, get out,
think about people you can actually communicate with that you don't see very often or that
you've actually never seen before. All the people that you see, even just starting with
hello, that really becomes just a great conversation right there.
Then after that's done, you can really talk yourself up. To talk yourself up, this is
again that self-talk, but this is an expression that means to say good things about yourself.
You can also talk other people up as well where you're saying, "Yeah, he's a good guy.
She's really good at playing the piano," or something like that. You're giving praise
to someone. You're talking them up, so to talk someone up. Talk yourself up. "Oh, I
just said something. I had a conversation with that person, even if it was only just
saying, hello." The things you say to yourself will get you more motivated to speak more,
and it will really just unlock your voice. Well that's it. I don't want to give you too
much information, but hopefully that was helpful for you. I know ,the people I almost care
most about are those that really know a lot. They really study, but they're just really
still feeling too nervous about speaking. Think about that. Get out, find some people
that you see, maybe never even seen before, and say hello to them, and see what happens.
Well, that's it for this lesson. I hope you have enjoyed it. Again, my name is Drew Badger.
I am the founder of EnglishAnyone.com, where we help people become confident-fluent English
speakers. Not only teaching them the words they need to use, but also how to think more
positively about themselves and their English so they can become great speakers. If you'd
like to learn more about that, you can click on the link in the upper-right of this video
or on the link in the description below this video, and that will tell you more about the
fluency course. This is our most popular, best-selling program which gives you some
quick wins. This means things that are going to make you
successful the first time. From the first day you begin using the program, you start
learning lots of great vocabulary, but we also transform you as a speaker. The longer
term thing, I know fluency doesn't just happen overnight, so that's why we teach a lot of
great things, a lot of great vocabulary that you can use immediately, the first day you
start learning. But over time, as you work through the lessons, you actually develop
into a fluent speaker just by following the simple steps. It's really a great program,
and I would be really excited to welcome you to it if you're not in there already. Well,
you can click on the link in the upper- right to do that. If you'd like to learn more about
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