"I feel nervous when people speak to me in English..."

hi there I'm Drew Badger the world's first and number one English Fluency

Guide and in this video I'd like to help solve another problem that a lot of

learners ask me about and this is when maybe they don't really have a lot of

speaking confidence they're nervous about other people coming up and

beginning to ask them questions or try to start speaking so how do you deal

with this how do you how do you deal with the nervousness you feel when other

people are asking you questions about fluency or you know just having trying

to have a conversation with you now the answer to this is really the same answer

that you would give to any situation where you're feeling nervous about

something especially nervous about other people trying to try to make you

interact in some way in this case you're speaking but it begins with preparation

so something I would do when I was struggling with Japanese and trying to

learn how to say things and feeling very nervous actually about speaking is when

people would start talking to me I would think oh no I I'm actually worried in

conversations because I don't know how to respond to people and even worse than

that people will know that I don't know how to respond to people I know that's a

weird sentence but it's one thing to have weak ability but when people know

you have weak ability that's it really felt it really felt very bad for me so

what I started doing was just visualizing the process beforehand and

just thinking to myself okay like I'm going to sit here and just visualize

other people coming to me and trying to speak and asking me questions and things

like that and I thought okay like the worst that happens is I won't be able to

understand what they're saying or I won't be able to give them you know like

the answer they're looking for or whatever or maybe even I make a mistake

it doesn't really matter but I would just visualize this process and when you

begin thinking okay what's the worst that could happen like it's really not

so bad even if I felt a little bit nervous in conversations actually very

nervous I'm a little bit like ashamed to admit it but yeah I did feel very

nervous about it but really I mean it doesn't matter I'm not Japanese I wasn't

born in Japan so I'm not supposed to be fluent native Japanese

speaker so it's okay if I make mistakes so when I get into a conversation like

that with people I don't have to feel so nervous so that's the the beginning part

of this but then also the second step for visualization is that you're

imagining yourself actually being confident it doesn't really matter if

you know the language or not it's just more you feel excited about that coming

because you know it's an opportunity for you to learn something so don't think

about it as a chance for you to be embarrassed or for someone to expose you

because you don't know how to speak or you might make a mistake think about it

as a chance to learn something Wow somebody is actually coming to me to ask

something or to practice with me I'm probably going to make a mistake but

it's more important that I get to learn something right now so I'm actually

having a experience right now where like somebody walks up to me and I think oh

no like I could make a mistake but at the same time at the same time I do have

an opportunity to learn something from them

so I could just maybe like learn a new word or phrase or even I just have

another opportunity to practice and improve so there's always that that's

thinking about excuse me what's the the positive thing that's stronger than

maybe the negative thing that I might think is happening so when you're

visualizing this think about both of these situations when you're not around

native speakers number one remember that it's not as bad as you think it is

it never is bad is we think it will be and then the other part of that it's

like wow I actually can learn something from this so it wants you to be more

excited and it makes you more excited about getting into conversations with

people now the second part of this is when you're actually in the conversation

especially if you feel nervous focus on just having a few things that you can

use to respond to people and to get them speaking more so if you feel nervous in

conversations when you're speaking with people do do the like this kind of let

them do the talking and you can do that by just saying things like tell me more

it's like these are the three magic words that will get other people

speaking because most people pretty much all of us really I don't really know a

person that doesn't like talking about themselves you know Here I am I'm

talking about myself in this video but when you're thinking about these things

if you allow the people to speak they're going to be

much more excited to speak and you will learn a lot more in the process but

during this time where you're developing your confidence you're improving a

little bit more you should be trying to speak if you can but if you don't really

have that confidence and you just want to be a little bit more comfortable

about it you want to take a bit more time and really become much more

confident then you can do that by just asking questions like oh that's

interesting tell me more so even if you don't understand everything you're

hearing you're just getting like could you explain more about this tell me more

about that you're letting the other person speak

and it's just getting you excited and making you feel more comfortable about

being in the conversation itself the third step to this is as you do feel

more confident you begin saying more things and I've talked about this in

previous videos where I really want you to not just say the same thing over and

over again but give a slightly different answer a slightly different way of

expressing something maybe change one word or part of a phrase when you're

expressing something that like instead of saying like I went yesterday and it

was a lot of fun you could say I went yesterday and it was really interesting

or it was really engaging or I had a great time so you're taking one thing

you're maybe saying the same thing but adding something to that and changing

that expression just a little bit so these are great ways where you can take

what you know and as you're learning things you begin to push yourself a

little bit more to speak a little bit more and over time as you do these three

steps visualizing listening and then speaking a little by little this is

what's really going to help you develop your speaking confidence in feet make

you feel much more excited about conversations so if you feel nervous try

following these steps even just the visualization by itself can really have

you feeling a lot more excited about conversations and a lot less nervous

really you're not going to remove the fear but that your job is to make the

fear so insignificant so tiny so small because the excitement that you have

about getting into a conversation is way up here so the amount of fear doesn't go

away but you can make the fear seem like a lot less because you're just so much

more excited about the conversation anyway if this has been helpful for you

do click on this video click that like button and do let me know in a comment

down below if you have any questions about what I'm

talking about you can also become a subscriber to the YouTube channel if you

haven't already and if you'd like to learn more about improving your speaking

confidence your fluency everything else you need in order to become a confident

fluent speaker do click on the link in this video or on the link in the

description below this video and that will take you to our free English

fluency quiz so this will let you tell us exactly what your problem is maybe

you struggle with your pronunciation your listening or maybe your confidence

because you're watching this video but click on that and we can tell you the

exact steps you can take to improve that so you really develop your fluency much

much faster so click on the link in this video or on

the link in the description below this video and I look forward to seeing you

in the video coming up next bye bye