Brain science explains why you lack confidence when you speak English

the biggest problems that clients share with me  i don't feel confident when i speak english i  

don't have enough vocabulary and i'm not fluent  enough now what's wrong with these sentences  

we'll see in this episode hi i'm your  english coach christina and welcome to  

speak english with christina step by step  english lessons to help you learn faster  

feel more confident and reach your full potential  and today like every week i'll help you move  

one step closer to reaching your goals in  business english actually before we get  

into today's topic i want to try something new to  help you to better learn vocabulary with my videos  

at the start of each video i'll teach you a  few chunks or expressions we'll put them on the  

screen for you so you can write the expression  and the definition and then you'll hear the  

expression somewhere in the video and when you  hear it you can write the sentence that i say to  

have the expression in context so get your pin and  your notebook and let's go the first expression is  

to chill out to chill out and this means to relax  by doing an activity that's just calm and relaxing  

the second expression is it blows my mind  it blows my mind it means i'm extremely  

impressed surprised or amazed by something  all right let's get into our topic so  

i don't feel confident when i speak english  i don't have enough vocabulary and i'm not  

fluent enough when i speak english what do  you notice about these sentences they're all  

negative and i can tell you from my 15 years of  teaching business english that these feelings are  

very very common for learners so if you feel this  way why is that and hint it doesn't have a lot  

to do with your level now here's something that i  learned in my training as a neuro language coach  

your brain it likes to be lazy it likes to react  just automatically when possible without thinking  

too much and this includes how you feel when  you speak english nervous shy or not confident  

now why is this let's go back in time a lot of  clients tell me about their bad english classes  

at school well for most of us that was a long  time ago so how can your english classes from 30  

or 40 years ago affect the emotions that you feel  today when you have to speak english especially in  

professional situations if you felt negatively  about your english classes when you were a kid  

your brain began to say to itself english  bad feelings so that became your brain's  

automatic reaction and because your brain  likes to react automatically it has had  

many years to practice disassociation english  bad feelings and maybe maybe you like learning  

english now especially when you chill out watching  the crown on netflix but when you have to perform  

in english those old automatic feelings return now  what do i mean by perform in english for example  

when you have to do a conf call with  americans and and you feel nervous  

or you're gonna present a product to some new  clients and you feel uncomfortable these are all  

high-stakes situations where you have to  perform it's a little like back in school

and both at school and at work you want to do well  so the environment is different between school and  

work but the emotions that you feel are similar  so even if you had bad experiences learning  

english in school 30 years ago your brain still  automatically associates negative emotions with  

speaking english when you have to perform and  those old feelings have been programmed into your  

brain for many years it's the automatic emotion  that your brain defaults to and as a result  

you feel nervous you lose confidence and you  don't speak as fluently as you want it's crazy  

right i mean this stuff blows my mind but don't  worry because there's good news you can actually  

reprogram your brain to feel confident and fluent  when you speak english and stop those automatic  

negative emotions and you don't  even have to improve your level  

that much really how is that possible that will  be a topic for a future video but if you want to  

start feeling more confident and more comfortable  and more fluent speaking english join my faster  

fluency conversation club each week you'll have  up to five hours of live conversation practice for  

more fluency and more confidence and you'll get  lots of resources to help you a podcast in english  

the transcript vocabulary cards grammar exercise  pronunciation exercise to help you speak better  

and notes from your teacher after the conversation  session so to get all of this and to support my  

work at speak english with christina become a  member of the faster fluency conversation club  

and the link to join is below the video and now  you're one step closer to feeling more confident  

speaking business english and if you want  to take a few more steps with me then i've  

created a playlist for you about how to improve  your english faster it has episodes to help you  

stop translating in your head to learn advanced  vocabulary and to have more confidence when  

you speak so click here to continue learning  with me and i'll see you in the next episode