This Graph Explains Why You're too Scared to Speak English | How to Become More Confident 💪

(upbeat music)

- I was scrolling through Twitter the other day,

which I actually think is potentially

the best social media network out there,

although I never really post on there.

And I came across this chart

which I thought was just fantastic.

And I would love to know your thoughts on this,

because I think it might explain

confidence levels when it comes to learning English,

and also picking up any new skill.

So in this lesson, I'm gonna go through this graph

and talk about these different stages

and the types of emotions and thoughts that you may have

as your knowledge of English increases.

Okay, so let's have a look at this graph,

and I'll leave a link to the original article that has this.

And you can see on the,

I can never remember off the top of my head,

the y-axis is confidence.

I hope that's right.

And the x-axis is knowledge in field.

So you can think about this as your confidence

when it comes to speaking English.

And also your knowledge of English,

how much English you know, what level you have.

And the starting point is when you have no confidence,

you have no knowledge of English and you just say, "huh?"

This is an example here, "Huh, huh?"

Which means, I have no idea what is happening.

I can't speak a word of English,

and I have no confidence in this

because I've just got started.

And I remember, this happened to me.

When I was learning the guitar,

when I first picked up my guitar, took it out,

and I thought, I've no idea

what I'm going to do with this guitar.

And it was the same when I started learning Spanish.

When I bought my first Michelle Thomas CD,

and I thought, I've no idea what is going on here.

I've no idea how much I need to learn

and what is going to happen with this.

But you're a beginner, so you stick at it.

And you gain a little bit of knowledge,

and then your confidence goes sky high.

And you can see on the chart, it says, I know everything.

You've gained a little bit of knowledge,

but your confidence is sky high.

And I remember this when

I was on my third Michelle Thomas CD.

And they called it an advanced level, so, advanced Spanish.

And I thought, this is amazing.

This is so easy, I know everything.

And I started learning Spanish because

I was just about to go traveling in South America.

And I thought, I'm gonna talk to everybody,

it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be great.

And it was the same with the guitar.

When I picked up my guitar and I learned a few chords,

I learned a few Oasis songs.

And I thought, this is it.

I'm brilliant at the guitar, I'm gonna impress everybody.

But then things get a little bit more complicated,

and your confidence isn't quite as high.

The next stage is, as you learn a little bit more,

you say to yourself, there's more to this than I thought.

There's more to Spanish than just knowing

a few Michelle Thomas phrases.

There's more to the guitar

than just learning a few basic chords.

So when my friend said, "Oh,

"why don't you play a bar chord?"

I was like, "What, a bar chord?"

"Yeah, a bar chord."

I said, "I have no idea what a bar chord is."

And he said, "Oh, you just put your finger over all

"of the frets and then you use your fingers like this."

And I tried it, and I thought,

that really hurts, I can't do that.

And when it came to Spanish,

it was when I arrived in Ecuador

and I tried to speak with the locals.

And they said something, and I said,

"I've no idea what you just said to me."

So, this is called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

And as you can see, you think that you know everything,

and then you soon realize that

there's a lot more to this than I thought,

and I'm sure this has happened to you with English.

Sometimes our confidence is really high.

And then it comes down, because you realize

there's a lot more to it than you thought.

And then the next stage is as you gain more knowledge,

your confidence decreases even more.

Because you say, I'm never going to understand this.

This is ridiculous.

And for me with Spanish,

this happened when they started talking

about the subjunctive, (speaking in foreign language).

Sorry about my accent, it's been a while.

Where you have to change the verb form

because of certain reasons,

and I just, I didn't like that.

Because I was used to saying things in the present form,

I didn't want to use a subjunctive,

I didn't want to know about it.

And I remember thinking, do I have to say this?

This is, I'm never going to understand this level.

And for you, this might be

when it comes to listening to movies.

So you go to class for 10 weeks

and you gain some confidence, and you think,

oh, yeah, I'm starting to understand things

and I'm gaining more knowledge.

And then you watch a movie,

and it just, you can't understand a word.

And this is when your confidence is really low.

The next stage is when things start to pick up a little bit,

when you start to feel more confident,

and it's starting to make sense.

It's starting to make sense.

And I think this is when you can really picture

nearly every aspect of the English language

and what you need to do to improve.

And knowing exactly what is involved here.

I've not reached this stage with my guitar yet.

It's not starting to make sense,

because I haven't been consistent enough.

It did start to make sense when I was learning Spanish

a few years ago, and I'm probably around there now, too.

So, this is a good stage to be at.

And to get there, it takes a lot of consistent action.

To show up every day, because a great lesson here,

and I'm gonna teach you this right now,

is to stay consistent, even though you don't want to do it,

and even though you get disheartened.

Even though you feel down because there's more to this

than I thought, or I'm never going to understand this.

And it's to still do the things that will make a difference

even though your confidence is low.

Because as you can see in the graph,

it starts to pick up again.

English is starting to make sense.

I just understood "Friends" TV show,

or I listened to a podcast,

and I understood 90% of it, I read a book,

I understood a lot.

This is probably a B2 level of English.

B2 to C1.

And then the next stage is pretty funny,

because your confidence isn't really super high.

It's not as high as when you first started out.

And you say, trust me, it's complicated.

I've been there, I've done that.

I've reached this level of English, which is great.

But trust me, it's complicated,

and I still need to know more.

You know, you're going to have to learn things

like mixed conditionals and slang from the UK

if you wanna watch UK TV shows, you're gonna have to

be able to speak in a way where people

can understand and it's very complicated.

Trust me about this, I've been there, I've done that.

And even though your confidence isn't high,

as high as when you started out,

you've got a really good level.

Your knowledge is high, you've got a high level of English.

(car rumbling)

That's a bit loud.

And I think a part of this as well,

is I remember reading somebody say

that when you become fluent in English,

it's not like everything is just magical.

It's just the new normal.

So don't feel like when you actually reach your goal

that you're going to feel like you're in a magical place.

You might do, but for a lot of people,

it just becomes the new normal.

Like, "Yeah, I'm fluent now.

"It's who I am, it's what I do."

And you can tell people,

look, this is gonna be a long journey.

You're going to have days where you feel low on confidence,

when you realize there's a lot to learn.

But if you stick with it and if you keep working at it,

then you can reach this great level of English.

Let me know what you think about this.

I found this very interesting, the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Hopefully I've pronounced that correctly.

And obviously it doesn't apply to everyone

or every situation, and I think also,

confidence can go up and down, up and down, up and down.

We can experience this in one day,

when you think, ah, I'm doing so well

with my latest English lessons.

And then you watch a movie

and you don't understand anything.

But then you watch it again

and then it starts to make sense.

And then this is what we can live every day.

So, know that confidence comes and goes.

And the key is just to stay consistent with it,

to understand what you have to do to improve

and to enjoy the journey.

It's fun.

So, if you're new here, like and subscribe to this channel,

or like the video and subscribe to this channel.

And then share this video with your friends

if you think it's going to help them.

And if you don't have it yet,

get my book, "The 5 Step Plan for English Fluency."

There's a link in the description, click that,

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Okay, thank you so much for watching.

Speak to you soon, bye bye.

(upbeat music)