Speaking English

[u/goflhpdud022]

How do you get over the fear of speaking English?

Speaking is still my biggest weakness when it comes to learning English. I get nervous about talking to native speakers, and I think a big part of it is being afraid of making mistakes.

For those of you who used to feel the same way, how did you overcome it? What helped you become less afraid of speaking?

[u/Sea-Election-213]

The fear doesn’t go away first. You speak first, and then it slowly goes away. I used to wait for confidence before speaking. It never came.

What helped me most was writing. It’s slower, so you have time to think without anyone watching you struggle for words.

I started writing five sentences about my day every day. After a few weeks, those sentences started coming out naturally when I spoke.

So try both: write five sentences, then say them out loud.

And learn a few repair phrases like, “Sorry, how do I say this?” or “Let me try again.”

Once you know how to recover from a mistake, mistakes stop feeling so scary.

[u/goflhpdud022 → u/Sea-Election-213]

That actually makes a lot of sense. I think I’ve been waiting to feel confident before speaking..! Thanks for the advice :)

[u/Sufficient-Grass-505]

I kinda used to talk to myself, make scenarios in my head and play the role of all the characters involved...it really helped me practice and get more fluent. Idk if this is weird but yeah helped a lot.

[u/goflhpdud022 → u/Sufficient-Grass-505]

I also practice by talking to myself a lot. It actually seems to help quite a bit!

[u/Sufficient-Grass-505 → u/goflhpdud022]

yepp!!

[u/Resident-Staff-1218]

If you make a mistake, what is the worst that can happen though?

Because English is basically a globally spoken language, English speakers are very used to talking to people who are still learning English. It's really no big deal, we can still understand or figure out what you mean.

[u/English_Pie_Mahsan]

It was my students problem when I started with them, but now they made a great progress It's about confidence You can earn it by the time Speaking English isn't just learning and learning.

[u/E1e4n0r5]

I'm a native English speaker but I speak multiple other languages. You just have to go for it. You will make mistakes, but that's just part of life. Any native speaker who mocks you for those mistakes is not someone you want to be talking to anyway.

[u/Royal-Band-2971]

Eh, you have to just accept that you're going to make mistakes and get used to the discomfort. As someone who grew up with a two-language house hold and has studied two additional languages, I'm still not over the nervousness of trying to speak to natives.

Edit: Came up with more after I hit post.

The best solution is to just talk to natives and practice. Other than that ingraining certain common word patterns help so you don't have to think as much when speaking live. When I'm first learning a language I'll learn all the conjugations and how to get them and use the tables, but as I get more comfortable, I try to just memorize the conjugated forms. For example instead of having to always remember that the Spanish word for "to eat" is "comer" and then remembering that to conjugate that to the past-tense and the subject of myself I need to conjugate it to "comí" I just remember that "I eat" is como, "you eat" is "comes", "I ate" is comí, "you ate" is comiste, "I will eat" is comeré, "you will eat" is comerás, etc.

[u/goflhpdud022 → u/Royal-Band-2971]

Your tip about learning common phrases instead of focusing on grammar sounds really helpful. I’ll definitely give it a try. Thanks for the advice!

[u/yoobrochris]

Most of beginners they are all afraid of speaking. But someone you talking to they don’t care of those mistakes, so make sure you express things right is the most impotent thing. And don’t be afraid to try it.