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.
