5 Tips For Overcoming Your Fear of Speaking English in Public
hi i’m vanessa from speak english with
vanessa calm how can you have more
courage to speak in public in front of
other people in english well today i
have a special guest our special guest
is jacob jacob is living in korea and
he’s learning korean and he has to get
over feeling afraid about speaking this
completely new language in front of
other people and possibly making
mistakes so he’s going to share with us
today five tips for getting over that
fear of speaking in front of other
people he has a lot of interesting
insight and i think it’s important to
hear another perspective it’s good to
hear what one person has to say and you
hear my perspective a lot but i want to
share with you what jacob has to say and
really learn from his experience and
hopefully you two will be able to speak
in front of other people and feel more
confident about it are you ready to meet
Jacob let’s go hello Vanessa members of
The Fearless fluency Club and everyone
else watching my name is Jacob from
Jacob teacher calm and today I’m going
to talk to you about something very
common that many people who are learning
the English language struggle with and
that is the fear of approaching and
conversing with native English speakers
on a regular basis when we’re learning a
new language we spend a lot of time
studying alone and when it actually
comes time to speak and interact with
native speakers of that language in the
real world it can be very intimidating
of course we want to practice with
native speakers we want to use the
language that we’ve been working so hard
at in real conversations but maybe
inside we’re afraid that we’ll say the
wrong thing or that we won’t be
understood or that we’ll make a fool of
ourselves whatever it is there are many
fears that hold us back in these
situations and it’s definitely
fear that you’re going to want to get
over quickly because having regular
conversations with native English
speakers is the fastest way to improve
as an English speaker yourself so I’m
going to give you five tips in this
video to overcome this fear now you’re
going to find this most helpful if
you’re someone who’s learning English in
an english-speaking country but wherever
you are in the world you’ll still be
able to find some value in the tips that
I give you before we get into the tips I
just want to give you some background
information about myself so I’m living
in Korea at the moment I’ve been living
here since August of 2015 and when I
first came to Korea I spent a lot of
time studying Korean I would study
Korean for maybe 2 or 3 hours a day and
there were so many opportunities for me
to practice my Korean with native
speakers but what I found was I was
scared inside I was scared of
approaching Koreans and having real
conversations and trying to use all of
the things that I was studying on my own
in real conversations and it was really
preventing me from progressing as a
Korean speaker now eventually with lots
of hard work I was able to overcome this
fear but it took a long time and the
five tips that I’m going to give you in
this video are things that I learned
during this time of my life okay so
let’s just get right into it my first
tip for you is to remember that you have
the perfect excuse and that is that
you’re not a native speaker of English
so if you say something that’s a little
embarrassing or something that is
accidentally a little inappropriate
native speakers are going to understand
that English is not your first language
and most of the time they’re going to be
a little more patient with you they’re
going to make more of an effort to
understand what it is you’re saying to
many people when they’re learning
English they worry that if they don’t
speak with perfect grammar or if they
don’t pronounce their words perfectly
that English speakers aren’t going to be
able to understand them and this is just
not true and it’s very unfortunate
because it prevents many people from
having the conversations that they need
to have to grow as an English speaker so
if you keep this in mind if you
number that it’s okay to screw up that
most of the time native English speakers
are going to be very understanding and
patient with you and that English isn’t
your first language so you’re going to
make mistakes it can be a lot easier and
it can feel a lot more comfortable
approaching native English speakers
now I should say most of the time
sometimes you’re just going to have bad
experiences speaking English you’re
going to maybe have a conversation with
someone who’s not very patient with you
who’s perhaps even being a little rude
and it’s not going to feel very good it
can feel very discouraging but the key
is to not let these bad experiences
which you’re going to have sometimes
affect how you approach your English
conversations in the future now this can
be very difficult to do a lot of the
time when we have bad experiences with
people when someone is maybe a little
rude to us it can be very easy to take
things personally and to feel like
there’s something wrong with you
but that’s just not the case in reality
the person you were talking to probably
they’re probably just in a bad mood they
probably have some things going on in
their life that is making them behave in
that way so try as hard as you can not
to take things personally it’s not that
you’re a terrible English speaker it’s
not that you’re a terrible person just
let the bad experiences go try not to
focus on them and keep moving forward
that’s the most important things that
you can do tip number three is to get
into the habit of asking yourself the
following question what is the worst
possible thing that could happen now I
want you to imagine that you’re in a
coffee shop let’s say and you see
someone who you want to try and have an
English conversation look you want to
practice your English but you feel this
fear inside of you and it’s preventing
you from going over and approaching that
person I want you to get into the habit
of asking yourself in these moments what
is the worst possible thing that could
happen if I went and approached that
person and had a conversation with them
what is the worst possible thing that
could happen and really in almost every
situation the war
possible thing that could happen is that
you feel a little embarrassed that the
conversation doesn’t go so well and you
just don’t really feel good about it the
next question that you should ask
yourself then is if that did happen if
the worst possible thing did happen
could I deal with it could I be okay and
of course the answer is yes of course
you can deal with a little bit of
embarrassment so if you’re practicing
asking yourself these questions and if
you really kind of realize that if the
worst possible thing did happen you’d
still be okay it’s going to shrink that
fear that you have inside of you okay so
let’s imagine that you worked up the
courage inside and you went to go speak
with that native English speaker and
practice your English and let’s imagine
that the conversation went terribly
let’s imagine that the worst possible
thing happened that you made a total
fool of yourself that you feel very
embarrassed now what do you do well my
fourth tip for you and this is probably
the most important tip on this list is
to laugh at yourself I want to share
with you a story again from my personal
life my girlfriend is Korean and her
English is not perfect and I remember
early in our relationship at one point I
had my arm around her and she was
looking at my arm and I remember she
said oh my god you have so much fur and
naturally I burst out laughing it was
very funny for me to hear the Korean
word for fur is pull and it’s used to
refer to hair that’s on animals as well
as body hair that’s on humans so she was
just directly translating from korean to
english to a native english speaker of
course though in english this sounds
hilarious it sounds so strange and I
explained why I was laughing to her and
once she understood she started laughing
a lot to the point is that she makes
mistakes like that all the time and I
make mistakes in Korean too all of the
time I regularly really make a fool of
myself and say very silly sounding
things and this is going to happen to
you you’re it’s part of learning the
language it’s a necessary part of
learning the language it’s how you learn
so if you’re able to laugh at yourself
when you make these big mistakes and
when you say something
sounds a little silly you’re going to
have a much easier time my last tip for
you today is a very practical one it’s
something that you can start using
immediately if you live in an
english-speaking country and the last
tip is to talk to people who have to
talk to you it can be very very scary to
approach strangers on the street and
many times people don’t want to be
approached on the street but if you’re
living in an english-speaking country
then you have many opportunities
throughout the day to practice your
English with people whose job it is to
talk to you I’m talking about when you
order coffee or when you’re ordering the
meal at a restaurant or even when you’re
shopping for clothes all of these are
perfect opportunities to really practice
your English with native English
speakers and a lot of the time the
people who are working at these jobs the
people who are working at coffee shops
are working at the mall
they’re very bored there’s been working
at their job for maybe eight hours that
day and they’d be happy to talk to you a
lot of the time so you’re probably doing
them a favor by going over and trying to
practice your English with them so that
is everything that I wanted to tell you
today I hope you found these tips
helpful if you’re someone who’s
struggling with the fear of approaching
people and having the type of
conversations that you really need to
have in order to improve as an English
speaker my name is Jacob from Jacob
teacher comm and I will send it back to
you Vanessa
bye bye thanks so much Jacob for sharing
your personal experience your
girlfriend’s experience and this idea
that we need to get over our fear of
speaking in front of other people it’s
certainly not an easy thing but I think
that you have shown it’s possible even
if you make mistakes even when you make
mistakes smile be nice to yourself and
keep going
beautiful advice thanks so much and I
hope that you’ll join us again in the
future
bye everyone see you later the next step
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to becoming a confident English speaker
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thanks so much for learning with me bye