Perfect English 🙅‍♀️ You DON'T Need it to Start Speaking!

Stop trying to be perfect!

I'm Emma from mmmEnglish and today I've got a video

for you

in which we're going to talk about perfectionism.

Perfectionism.

And why it's holding you back.

Your confidence and your fluency in English is going to

improve if you can focus on being less perfect.

Now, of course, I've got my English students in mind

but what I'm sharing here in this video today is relevant

to all different parts of life.

This video is full of advanced vocabulary,

words that are going to help you to impress and inspire

people if you can learn to use them.

Don't forget to turn on the subtitles if you need to

and then strap in and enjoy the ride!

On the surface, perfection seems like a good idea right?

It seems like a positive characteristic.

Your aim is to be perfect. You're meticulous,

you pay attention to the details so that you don't

make mistakes. You like to do a good job.

You really want to impress, right? But really,

perfectionism is about control.

It's about being in control, being prepared

and looking good, right?

Knowing what to say, not looking stupid.

Of course, you know we all like to be in control.

It's where we feel comfortable, it's when we feel safe.

Right here inside our magical little comfort zone.

Speaking in another language with other people

in an actual conversation is probably one of the most

out of control experiences that you can have.

You haven't mastered the language yet,

you can't be confident that you'll always know the words

to say or that you'll understand the question correctly.

It's impossible, right? It's impossible to be perfect

in this situation.

And yet this is what so many of you expect.

You expect yourselves to be perfect and if you're not,

then you shame yourself for it.

You put yourself down and most often

we fear our imperfection so much

that we avoid taking action at all.

You know days or weeks or months go past

and we don't do anything.

We make excuses.

I'm just a little bit too busy right now.

I've got too many things on.

I don't have anyone around me that I can speak English

with so I can't practise. That's why I can't improve.

You procrastinate!

We make excuses that we don't want to do something

until we can do it perfectly

or until it's easy and it comes naturally

so much so that sometimes we never

actually get to the point of taking

action in the first place, right?

We've talked ourselves out of it

before we've even got a chance to try.

Does that sound familiar? Does it?

Or maybe you do manage to work up the courage

to start something, to join a conversation

but then after you pick out all of the things

that you did wrong. It wasn't good enough.

It is a really tough situation, you know?

If you do something, well it's not good enough.

But if you don't do something, well you can't learn

from it and make progress and improve it next time.

By not speaking, you compromise your opportunity to

meet new people or to build your experience

in conversations and broaden your comfort zone.

So all of this is why I wanted to create this video.

If you can focus less on being perfect

accept that you're gonna make mistakes and also

that you're going to learn from them,

then you can have more real conversation

experience and become more fluent

and more creative when you're speaking in English.

So let me share my four strategies or four steps

to help you worry less about being perfect.

If you know someone who struggles to speak English,

they need to get more practice but they don't have the

confidence to join English conversations then

please make sure you share this video with them.

You know we all need to be reminded that

being imperfect is okay,

that our failures are an essential part

of our success. The failures that you experience

today are going to create the success

that you have tomorrow.

It's important to keep that in mind.

The first thing I want you to do is relax your standards.

So your standards is just another way of saying

your expectations, what you expect of yourself.

So I want you to relax your standards.

Think about what would be an acceptable outcome

rather than the ultimate best possible outcome.

What would allow you to leave a conversation feeling

like you'd achieve something, that it wasn't an awful

experience. Of all of my English language students,

one of the most common goals that they have

and they say it all the time is

"I want to speak English perfectly.

I want to speak like a native speaker."

which of course is the ultimate goal,

to converse freely and you know, easily

in another language.

But if you're an intermediate level speaker,

that expectation is too high right now.

You can't have a perfect conversation right now.

Telling yourself or even thinking that you shouldn't be

making mistakes is really unreasonable

and it's stopping you from having conversations

and the experience that you need

to improve and become more fluent when you speak.

So are you holding back?

Are you waiting until you can speak better?

Until you can make fewer mistakes.

Are you waiting until your English is perfect

or at least at the level that you think it should be

before you go to language exchanges or

networking events or you start having conversations

that you really need to improve your fluency.

You can still have success without being perfect.

Now I know it's a little cliche

but I think it's important to remind ourselves that

no one is successful without failing first, right?

Film stars have faced hundreds of rejections before

they make it big. Top athletes train and train

until they master their skill.

Entrepreneurs on the Forbes 100 lists have failed

and failed until they work out how to build

a successful business.

So I would argue that you need to put yourself

in situations where you fail

in order to learn lessons

and move past them faster.

Failing or making mistakes is a part of your success.

Hey ladies I'm talking at you for just a minute!

I know that it's really hard to find genuine

speaking partners to practise English with,

especially online, so I've created The Ladies' Project

to help women learning English to make international

friends and practise speaking English often,

no matter where you are in the world.

If you're living in an English-speaking country

but you're not getting the practice that you need

or you expected, if you need to increase

your speaking confidence for your job

or because you want to travel more independently

or just to immerse yourself in a safe

and supportive English-speaking community,

then definitely check it out.

The Ladies' Project will help you to develop

your speaking confidence and fluency through

real conversation practice.

You're gonna make friends in different countries,

learn about different cultures and lifestyles

and build your confidence

and your fluency in no time at all.

And the best part is the experience is totally flexible.

If you haven't got a lot of time but you want to keep

moving forward with your English practice

or you simply want to maintain the conversation skills

that you have,

The Ladies' Project is the perfect place for you to do it.

Enrollments are opening very soon so if you want to find

out more, follow the link in the description

or just up here and make sure you're on our mailing list

so that you can find out when we're accepting

new members.

Places are limited but there's one waiting for you.

Okay my next tip is to focus on mini goals.

Instead of expecting everything to go perfectly

a hundred percent of the time,

focus on just one aspect of your conversation.

At first, it might be:

If I can introduce myself to everyone and they smile

back at me, I've succeeded.

Tick that off the list. You nailed it, right?

Next time it might be:

Politely interrupt someone and ask them to repeat

their question again.

If you do that

that's awesome! That's a really useful, functional thing

that you can learn and practise to do in conversations.

You could simply aim to make the other person

smile or laugh at a joke

and allow yourself to feel really pleased

when you achieve just that one thing.

The rest of it, you can deal with all of the

other mistakes and other things that happen next time

right?

Practise acting without thinking.

Okay now this one's pretty tricky because it takes guts.

How many times have you been part of a conversation

and you've hesitated just a little bit too long

to share your thoughts and then suddenly

the conversation's moved on

and you've missed your chance.

So

what if you were to start speaking

before you knew where you were going and you just

winged it?

I'm sure that lots of you have been in online classes

or conversations and listening really intently,

thinking about the topic but never saying anything

unless someone directs a question to you.

In which case, you probably freeze

and I know what you're thinking:

Emma, are you crazy?

Speaking before I know what I'm gonna say

is like conversation suicide.

What are you telling me to do?

To that I would say:

just make sure you've got a couple of expressions ready

to help you for when you get stuck

and I'm saying when you get stuck because you will

and that's fine.

Sorry! I've lost my train of thought.

Or...

I've completely forgotten what I was gonna say, sorry!

Scary I know,

but what's the worst thing that could happen?

I was talking to one of my students the other day, Miko.

Miko you're probably watching, hello!

But she told me that she had a parent-teacher night

at her son's school

and when she got there she realised that

everyone else was a native English speaker,

all the other parents, the teachers and at that moment

she wanted to leave

back out the door but

she forced her feet to take her into the room

before she could think about

all of the things that could go wrong.

She was already inside. She acted

before her mind convinced her not to

and you know what she said?

She said

"It really wasn't as bad as I was expecting."

Often in our head we prepare for the worst possible

outcome

so naturally our body wants to protect us

and we end up avoiding the situation. We put it off.

But by acting before we think, this is a little trick

that we can use to overcome fear and actually

take action

before our minds have had a chance to convince us

that it's a bad idea.

This is a little trick, I want you to try it out.

Take your fear into the everyday.

This is so important. Expose yourself to your fears

as often as you can and they're going to become as dull

and mundane as hanging the washing on the line.

Now it's definitely gonna take you a few intense

sweaty conversations to get you to the point

where a conversation is as simple

and easy as riding the bus.

But exposing yourself to impromptu discussions

will be a very important part of your practice

and it will help you to reduce your fear around speaking.

So I hope that my main message is clear here.

Be brave enough to take action

even when you're worried or you're afraid.

Even the tiniest little action will make it that tiniest

littlest bit easier next time

when you try again.

You are not perfect

and the world is totally cool with that.

It's only you who tells yourself that you need to be

perfect in conversation

and it's only you who is stopping yourself from making

that progress.

So that's what I think but what do you think?

Are you a perfectionist?

Do you think that your expectations for yourself

are a little too high?

Are you going to take any of this advice and use it

in some way? I really, really hope so

because I love seeing the unexpected success

of my students, when you know,

they think before they act

and they realise that actually it wasn't as bad

as they anticipated and they were able to learn

from real experience

and also because I hate seeing my students

miss out on opportunities to experience conversations

and speak with others because they demand perfection

or they tell themselves that they're not good enough

and they're not ready.

You are ready and with the right attitude,

you can start today.

For more lessons like this one, make sure you hit that

subscribe button down there.

You don't need to keep watching grammar lessons

today, you need to find a way to practise.

So if you're living in an English-speaking country,

then check out this lesson here for some

tips on how to get started and if you are not

then head to this one right here.

And I'll see you in there!