Strategies for English Fluency and Confidence

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.