“Are you paralyzed with fear? That's a good sign.Fear is
good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator.Fear tells us what we have to
do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or
calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
If you're anything like me, this quote sums up how you feel
about speaking a language.
Speaking in a foreign language is one of the most intimidating
challenges I've ever faced and at first, my reluctance to speak held me back
from making the progress I wanted to make.
I would spend hours with books and flashcards and I felt like I
was learning a lot! But when it came time for
conversation, I was lost. I couldn't get
the words out and I was left feeling like all my hard work had been for
nothing.
I was wrong though. All the hard
work I'd put into learning vocabulary and grammar wasn't wasted, it just wasn't
useful to me until I learned to overcome my fear of speaking. Once I did, the words started to
flow faster than I could ever imagine. After all, the
only way to learn to speak a language is to open your mouth
and actually say something .
As you may already know, there is no feeling more satisfying as
a language learner than that elation you feel after completing a conversation
in your target language.
So, what changed? How did I go
from being totally tongue-tied to speaking all the time?
Well, Fluent in 3 Months (Fi3M) certainly played a big role. It was the encouragement of this site that first convinced me to
give speaking a chance. And it's not an
understatement to say that that change has transformed my life and my
experience of language learning. I've gone from
speaking only English to speaking four foreign languages. And that's in just two years!
I'm hopeful that there are many more languages on the horizon
for me. If you're willing to give it a
try, speaking your target language from the beginning can give you equally
amazing results!
But believe me, I know it's not as easy as just reading a blog
post and starting to speak. There are
reasons you're worried about speaking.
3 Reasons You Struggle to Speak Your Target Language
Let's start by discussing some of the reasons why you might not
feel comfortable speaking your target language.
1. You're Too Shy
Me too! This was
probably my biggest reason for not speaking sooner. I'm not exactly a socialite. Give me a quiet night in with a good book over a night on the
town any day!
I've always found meeting new people challenging, so the idea of
doing this in a foreign language was incredibly intimidating!
2. You Don't Know Enough Words
This is most common excuse people have for not speaking and
honestly, there is some truth in it. After all, you
do have to know some words
before you get started. But actually
once you know a few basic sentences, you can easily have your first
conversation.
In English the top 1000 words make up almost 86% of the words we
regularly use in conversation. And this goes
for most other languages as well. So you don't
need to know 10,000 words before you begin. In fact, to have your first conversation, you probably only need
to know five or ten simple phrases!
I believe that it's best to start using the words you do know
from the beginning so that you become comfortable with them and with the
structure of your target language. Speaking is the
best way to do this.
It will also become easier to incorporate new vocabulary as you
learn it. Conversations will naturally be
focused on the topics that are most interesting/relevant to you, so they'll
help you discover which words are most important for you.
3. You're Worried about Making Mistakes
Most of us seem to have a stigma towards
making mistakesinherited from our schooldays. Back then, every mistake was a
accompanied by a big red mark, a lower test score and a negative comment from
the teacher.
We were taught that mistakes are a bad thing and that we must
try to avoid them. Nothing could be further from the
truth!
In almost every walk of life, we improve by making mistakes and
learning from our experiences. It's pretty
much the foundation on which civilization is built!
One of the other reasons we tend to fear mistakes is that we
fear people will laugh at us. This fear
exists in our brains but in reality people love it when you try to speak their
language, and they're normally extremely positive about helping you. They're not waiting for you to
fail, they want you to succeed!
So, how did I overcome my fear of speaking and how can you do
the same? Let's consider the practical
steps you can take to start speaking your target language sooner rather than
later.
A 5-Step Plan to Build Your Confidence in Speaking a
New Language
How can you build your confidence in speaking a new language?
The first thing you need to do is build up your enthusiasm so
that you're feeling excited and positive about speaking. My favourite way to do this is to
use visualisation .
Basically, the idea is to imagine yourself successfully using
your target language to have conversations with native speakers. The more clearly you can picture
this image in your mind the better.The reason this technique is useful is that
it helps to build up confidence to perform the action you've imagined; you've already seen yourself
doing it successfully in your mind, so now it's simply a case of repeating that
process in real life.
If you don't feel confident speaking your target language, try
doing the following exercise for five minutes each day:
· Close your eyes and imagine yourself using your target language
with a native speaker.
· Focus on the reasons why you wanted to learn the language in the
first place. Use those reasons to reconnect
with your motivation.
· Now see yourself successfully using the language with a native
speaker.
· Picture yourself receiving a smile and positive response from
the person you're talking to.
· When you picture yourself, notice your confident posture and how
comfortably you speak the target language.
This exercise may be what you need to build up the confidence to
have your first real conversation. And as you get
more good conversations behind you, your confidence will continue to grow.
How to Find a Conversation Partner to Practise Your
Target Language
The easiest way to find someone to speak to is through italki .Here you'll have
two options to practise your speaking:
· Language
Exchange – you can do a language
exchange for free with someone who is a native speaker of your target language. You'll speak in their language
for half of the session and in your language for the other half so that both of
you get an opportunity to practise.
· A session with a teacher/tutor – You can
book a session with a tutor or with a professional teacher.
Whichever you choose, you'll be having your conversation through
the internet over Skype or another video chat application. This is easiest and fastest way
to practise speaking with natives.
Both options have their benefits, but when I'm starting a new
language I prefer to have my first few conversations with teachers. Here are some of the reasons why:
· Teachers can provide you with corrections on your pronunciation
and grammar. This feedback is invaluable!
· You spend 100% of your time speaking your target language instead
of only half the time, as in a language exchange.
· Teachers are generally more dependable. If you book a session, you will have a session. Language exchanges are wonderful
but it can take some time to find an exchange partner who is as organised, reliable
and committed as you are.
The main downside to choosing a teacher is obviously that you'll
have to pay for your lessons,whereas language exchanges are free. Lessons can be expensive if
you're working with professional teachers, but on italki you'll find lots of
fantastic community tutors at lower prices who are just as good (if not
better!). In fact, I only ever work with
community tutors because I prefer the less structured, more relaxed environment
they offer.And depending where you live, you may be able to take advantage of
the currency difference to get classes that are affordable for you but still
provide the teacher in another country a good wage.
When you're feeling confident, take advantage of that 'moment of
bravado' and organise the time for your speaking session.Once you've organised
a time and someone else is expecting you to show up, it's much harder to quit
at the last minute. At the time of writing, I'm
studying Russian and I find booking all of my sessions one week in advance
makes it much easier for me to just show up and practise.
How to Prepare for Your First Conversation
Ok, now you've got your speaking session organised, but what are
you going to say?! After all, that's the scary bit,
right?
In my opinion, the best approach is to pick one particular topic
and focus on learning the vocabulary and phrases you need to talk about it. If this is your first
conversation, then it will probably be centred around introducing yourself.
Here's how I would do it:
1.
Think through a conversation you
might have to introduce yourself in your native language.
2.
Make a list of the questions that
come up and the main things you want to say about yourself.
3.
Start learning these phrases in
your target language. If you're
working with a book like Teach Yourself or Language
Hacking, it will include a lot of the phrases you need. Another good place to search is
[Omniglot] (http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/), which has lists of
introductory phrases for hundreds of different languages!
If you struggle with memorising the phrases, just try your best
and fall back on your cheat sheet when you need it. That's what it's there for after all!
And don't forget, you can always have an online dictionary or
Google Translate open during your conversation in case you get really stuck and
you need to look up a few words. I found WordReference amazing
for this when I was learning French.
Bonus Tip: Don't Forget the Magic Words
There are a few particular phrases that I always learn before my
first conversation and I suggest you do too.
· How do you say … in [target language]?
· Can you repeat that please?
· I don't understand
· Can you speak more slowly, please?
Combine these words with your cheat
sheet and the phrases you've memorised and you're
ready to start!
What Happens if You Make Mistakes?
Embarrassing mistakes can be something you laugh about later on. And actually, the strong feeling
attached to laughter and embarrassment helps these words stick in our brains.
So if you make an embarrassing mistake with a word, you're much
less likely to forget that word again.
To illustrate this, I want to share my most embarrassing mistake
with you.
My Most Embarrassing Mistake…
My girlfriend is from Argentina and we first met while I was
trying to learn Spanish. She came to
Ireland for a few days and I wanted to really impress her, so I took her to
this beautiful valley near my home called Glendalough. As we were walking through the valley, we approached a lake with
some ducks in it and I decided I was going to try and show off my Spanish
skills.
“Mira, ¡hay putas en el lago!”
“Look, there are ducks in the lake!” Or not. Turns out the spanish word for
duck is pato . A puta is
something quite different altogether – a prostitute! So I'd literally just said there were prostitutes in the lake.
I really ducked up with that Spanish mistake!
As if this wasn't bad enough, a few minutes later I tried to say
that we often see lots of birds in our garden but I mispronounced the
word pájaros (birds) as pajeros (wankers)! Those were some pretty
embarrassing blunders!
Luckily for me, she burst out laughing. And since then I've never forgotten the real words for duck or
birds in Spanish. So when it
comes to mistakes, embrace them . They can be embarrassing at the
time, but often they'll become funny stories that will help words stick in your
memory later on.
What I've Learned From Speaking 4 Languages (And What
You Can Learn Too!)
Speaking a new language is not as scary as it seems.
A couple of years ago, I couldn't see myself ever building up
the courage to speak to someone in a foreign language. I was so intimidated by the prospect. But here I am a couple of years later and I speak foreign
languages on a daily basis!
In fact, recently I've been learning Russian and I've focused
intensively on using the language by doing a least five hours of speaking
sessions every week.
Speaking has become the most enjoyable and the most rewarding
part of language learning for me and this is just not something I could ever
have imagined a few years ago. Far from being
scary, speaking is now a fun and relaxing exercise for me.
I think that more than anything, starting to speak has allowed
me to enjoy the journey of learning a language rather than getting too hung up
on the result.
I've also discovered that speaking regularly is an efficient way
to learn because it helps you improve your fluency and identify your
weaknesses. Every time I speak, I learn
something about which vocabulary I need to learn or which structures I need to
review, and this helps me to keep improving for the next time I speak.
Getting started is the hardest part but I'd encourage you to
stop thinking about it and just give it a try! Imperfect action beats doing nothing every day of the week. You'll be amazed by how much it
helps your language learning. Do you remember
the quote from the beginning of this post?
“The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we
can be that we have to do it.”
When you do it, it really does pay off.
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