How many times have you worried that
your English just isn't good enough? Because when someone asks you a
question in a business meeting, you struggle with expressing
your ideas clearly in English, or maybe it's hard to find the
exact words you want to use. Even after years of studying
and using English at work, it's still a challenge to express
your ideas out loud. Recently, a group of my students had a conversation
on this exact area of struggle and in the conversation, an
interesting question came up. One student asked "when
we face obstacles at work, or when we struggle to express
our ideas in English right away. Is it about our English or is
it our personality?" What a fascinating question. And I want to tell you exactly why this
question came up and why it's important, but first, if you don't already know, I'm Annemarie with
Speak Confident English, everything I do here is designed to
help you get the confidence you want for your life and work in English. And now let's go back to
why that question was asked. Why was my student curious if
the problem or the difficulty was her English or her personality? In that particular conversation, my students and I were discussing
introversion as a personality trait. If you are a fellow introvert like
myself and many of my students, you know, that you prefer to think before you speak, you naturally like to have all
your ideas fully formed before you share them out loud. That is
simply how your brain works. It's how you prefer to communicate in
English and in your native language as well. This is very similar to how many of us
prefer to communicate in a second or third language. Again, we prefer to have time
to think before we speak, there are so many different things
we need to work through. In our mind, we're thinking about grammar,
structures, rules, pronunciation, vocabulary. We want time to put all those
puzzle pieces together before we express ourselves. The challenge is, we don't always get that
luxury. For example, if you're in a job interview, or if you're in a quick 10-minute
brainstorming session with your team members to solve an
immediate problem at work, you don't always get the time
that you would prefer or like to have before you share your ideas. You have to respond to
questions immediately. If thinking out loud in English
is a struggle for you either because your brain is actively
working through grammar rules, pronunciation vocabulary, or if you also struggle
with thinking out loud, because you naturally prefer to think
before you speak as an introvert today's lesson is for you. I want to help you feel comfortable
with that process of thinking as you speak when you need to. And this means you may also need
to share your ideas before they are fully formed as introverts.
That's a real challenge. So today's lesson is all about
four instantly effective strategies to help you think out loud in English. [Inaudible]. Before we dive into the first strategy, I want to talk a little bit more
about why this is so important. Why do you need to learn how
to think while you speak? Again, if you're using English
as a second or third language, or if you're naturally introverted, you prefer to have everything
clear in your mind and prepared before you say them out loud. This is opposite to the think out loud communication style that is
preferred by extroverts. In fact, just as you need a lot of alone, quiet time to think carefully about
what you want to say and form those ideas. An extrovert actually
needs to speak out loud to put those puzzle pieces together. That is how they think most
clearly we could even say they speak in order to think. The reason this is a challenge
is in many workplaces, particularly in the United States, an extroverted communication
style is preferred, and it may even be expected. It may be expected that you're
able to communicate your ideas quickly. Even if you're not
ready. Several weeks ago, I did a lesson on the topic of
how to brainstorm in English, particularly if you're a
naturally shy and introverted. One of the recommendations I made
in that lesson was to learn how to think out loud, how to
express your thoughts, even when they're not fully formed. This lesson today is the
continuation of that. And we're going to focus a hundred
percent on how you can begin to practice thinking out loud
so that when you need to, you're able to do it successfully. Strategy number one is when
you're in a conversation and you're asked to speak in the moment
with little time to put your thoughts together, verify relevance and ensure
that you're on the right track. Let's unpack that a little bit. Sometimes when you're trying to put
your thoughts and ideas together, it's like looking for different pieces
of a puzzle and putting them in different places to see if they fit. There's
a lot of internal thinking going on. So while your team members
may be having a conversation, you might start to get
lost in the conversation. You're not focused on what they're saying. You're more focused on what
you're thinking internally. This might be because you're processing
everything in English. Again, trying to find the right grammar
structure and vocabulary. It might also be because it's your
natural preferred communication style as an introvert. So if someone suddenly asks you a question
and you're expected to respond in the moment, it might come as a surprise or
a shock to you, and you might think, I don't really know what
everybody was saying. I'm not prepared to say what
I want to say in that moment. You can do a couple of things to ensure
that you're on the right track and buy yourself a little bit more
time to get your thoughts together. First, you can ensure that your ideas or
what you might say are relevant. This is a great way to double
check whether something
has already been mentioned or discussed. For
example, just to clarify, have we discussed to clarify, have we already reviewed the data from
last August when we experienced a similar downturn in the market?
When I asked that question, I'm making sure that my
thoughts are relevant to the current conversation. I'm also giving myself a little
bit more time to think. Now, if you're afraid that you've totally
missed part of the conversation and you want to get filled in on the details
and buy yourself a little bit of a time, here are a few more questions you
can ask to make sure that your thoughts, your ideas are on track for the
conversation. Sorry, before I answer that, I'd like to circle back to the
details you shared on data from last August or before I answer that, could we briefly recap the details or
the main points of the discussion so far once more and asking these questions, you're ensuring that whatever
thoughts you had internally, whatever ideas you're considering
to share are appropriate or relevant to the current conversation.
And now strategy number two, this strategy is particularly
helpful. If like me, you're a fellow introvert and
prefer to have your ideas fully formed before you share them. You like to have the whole puzzle put
together or the whole picture ready. But again, we don't
always get that luxury. So to help you feel more comfortable, you can preface what you're going
to say to let others know that your idea is not fully formed. It can reduce some of that anxiety
that we feel when we have to communicate ideas that we
don't feel ready to share. This is also helpful when you're in a
conversation where everyone is expected to bounce ideas off one another. And I also like to remind my introverted
students that when you share an idea in a brainstorming session,
you're not married to it. You don't have to fully commit to it.
It's okay to change your mind later, especially when you're in a brainstorming
conversation where everyone is sharing initial ideas that aren't fully formed. So here's how you could preface some of
your statements. This is just a thought, but what if we, I'm just
thinking out loud here, but I'm still thinking
this through. However, let me give you a full example
of what that might sound like. I'm still thinking this through, however, would it be possible to have everyone
on a rotating schedule so that all of us are back in the office,
but on different days by
starting with the preface, I'm still thinking this through,
or I'm just thinking out loud. I'm letting others know that
my idea is not fully ready and it helps take the
pressure off me as well. Here are three more ways
that you can do that. I haven't figured out the logistics, but I'm just brainstorming here, but, and I'm still putting the pieces together, but here's another example. I'm
still putting the pieces together, but one option may be
to reschedule the event. I know it may require more work upfront
because we've already reserved the venue and sent out invitations, but rescheduling might allow us
to have much better attendance. Those particular sentence starters
are some of my favorites to use, especially when I'm feeling anxious
or feeling pressure to share something that I just don't think is ready.
And now let's move on to strategy. Number three of how you can get
more comfortable with sharing your ideas out loud, invite others
to share their mindscapes. I love that word mindscape
and it might be new to you. A mindscape is a mental
scene or an area of the imagination. When you invite
someone into your mindscape, you're inviting them into your
imagination. And of course, in our imagination, we're just
thinking of all the possibilities. The possibilities are limitless, inviting others into that conversation
can be a really fun discussion. And again, there's no pressure. There's not an expectation
that the ideas are fully formed and ready as a result, it can reduce your anxiety and
create more mental space for ideas that are in the works.
If an idea is in the works, it means it's still in process. You're
still thinking it through or forming it. So if you'd like to take a discussion
into another direction and invite others into your mindscape, here
are a different ways to do that. For this sake of exploring
a different perspective. How about those are great ideas, but what are your thoughts on exploring? Let's explore some alternatives
together. What if we, and finally, I'm pondering whether this will
work, but what's your opinion on, did you notice that in many of those
examples, I use the word explore, which is perfect. When we want to look
at alternatives, other perspectives, and really get into
imaginative thinking again, where our ideas are not fully
formed. Let me give you an example, sentence of how I might
use one of those phrases. Those are great ideas, but what
are your thoughts on exploring, switching to a totally new platform? When I say that I'm simply
introducing one of my own ideas and my idea might not be
fully formed. In fact, maybe I don't even want my company or
our team to switch to a new platform, but I'm just introducing it
to the conversation so that
we can consider it as an option. And now our final strategy for today
on how to confidently think out loud in English, whether you're struggling, because you're trying to put all
those English pieces together, or it's a challenge because
you're naturally introverted. Our strategy is piggyback
with confidence in a brainstorming conversation. You'll often hear others
piggyback on each other's ideas to piggyback on someone else's
idea means to use their existing idea as the basis or
foundation for your own in brainstorming. This is fantastic.
When you hear someone else's idea, you want to say that you agree with
it and you want to add to it in doing so that also alleviates some
of the pressure you might feel of needing to share a completely
formed idea instead of sharing your own. You're simply adding to someone else's
here are four great ways that you can do that. I'd like to explore
Susan's idea further. What if we, Susan made a great point. I wonder if I agree with
Susan and how about, and finally I like
Susan's idea and we could, let me give you an example of what it
would sound like using one of these in a sentence. I like Susan's idea of each team
member focusing on their own project rather than splitting up
tasks within a project. And we could look into using a project
management tool to make sure that everyone's on track with
that you have four instantly effective strategies to help you think
out loud in English with confidence so that you don't have to worry
about sharing unfinished ideas. Let me do a quick recap of the
four strategies. Number one, verify relevance and ensure
you're on track. Number two, preface your ideas when you don't
feel that they're ready. Number three, invite others into your
mindscape and number four, piggyback on other's ideas
with confidence to finish up. I have one simple question for you. If you struggle with sharing your
ideas out loud or thinking out loud, particularly when you
don't feel that they're ready, either because you're struggling with
putting all the pieces together in your English skills or because
you're naturally introverted. I would love to know which of these
strategies you're most excited about. Which one did
you hear and think, yes, I'm going to try to use that in my
next business meeting or my next brainstorming conversation. I would love to know which
one really fit with you. And I'd like you to try
using one of the example, phrases that you learned today. You
can use it in a real life example. Think about a conversation you've had
recently where you had to share one of your ideas. How could you have used one of
these phrases to help you do that? You can share your example
with me in the comments below. If you found today's lesson useful
to you, I would love to know. And as always you can tell
me in one very simple way, simply give this lesson a thumbs up
here on YouTube, and while you're at it, subscribe to this channel. So you never miss one of my
Confident English lessons. Thank you so much for joining me. And
I look forward to seeing you next time.
