How to Overcome the Fear of Speaking in English

How to Overcome the Fear of Speaking in English

As a youngster, I remember trying to speak Afrikaans, a common language here in South Africa. I quickly got the message that my fluency was less than perfect, because people would automatically switch to English. When they didn’t, I carried on trying to speak for several hours – actually just a few minutes; it just felt like an eternity due to pausing for lots of ‘um’s’ and ‘ah’s’ and ‘What’s the word’s?’

Once I remember asking for ‘aartappels’ at the greengrocer, thinking I was asking for apples, when the store assistant brought me potatoes (called ‘aartappels’ in Afrikaans). Due to these less than successful experiences (and too many potatoes in my cupboard), I stopped speaking Afrikaans so often, with the result that my Afrikaans got worse, so then I spoke less, my Afrikaans got worse, I spoke less… You get the picture. The result was a vicious cycle, one that English learners often also get trapped in, due to their anxiety about making mistakes.

Reflecting on my own challenges with trying to speak a second language and my experience as an EFL teacher, I would like to share some insights I have gained about how to speak English with more confidence.

1. People are not always judging you

Whenever I have asked Afrikaans speakers about whether they get annoyed when someone tries to speak their language and makes mistakes, they insist that they don’t. In fact, they’re happy that the person is making an effort. It is easy to think that you’re being judged negatively when you’re speaking a second language with a native speaker, but in reality, many people are not inwardly critiquing everything you say, praying for you to keep quiet, with the exception of course of people who just get annoyed by most things, and you probably don’t want to interact with those individuals anyway.

 

Unless you're in a speaking exam, people are unlikely to be judging your every word when you speak in English.

So, my advice would be to stop expecting other people to judge you negatively. More than likely, they are happy to have a conversation with you and find out where you are from and even help you with the correct word for ‘apples’ (it’s ‘appels’ in Afrikaans would you believe it).

I often thought Afrikaans speakers who would switch to English when hearing my mangled attempts at speaking their language were doing so because they thought I was doing a terrible job. I realised that it was simply because they were trying to be polite and spare me any difficulty, not because my attempt at their language sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Okay, not only because of that.

It might help you to keep in mind that most of us have experienced some social anxiety around speaking, if not through formally learning another language ourselves or making basic small talk when travelling in another country, then when giving presentations, contributing to a meeting, or being in a job interview. We’ve all been there.

Don’t get me wrong – you will encounter individuals who are none too thrilled about your efforts to ‘butcher’ their language, or are just having a bad day, or are just in a hurry. This leads me to my next tip.

2. Be Picky

Having had all these revelations about speaking a second language – and being an English teacher herself who wanted to ‘walk her talk’ so to speak – I eagerly pounced on the next available target on which to practice. This was my undoing.

Petra was the receptionist at the school where my child had just enrolled. I wanted to ask some questions about the enrollment process. As I stumbled through an agonising five minutes of trying to remember the words for ‘non-refundable deposits’, ‘curriculum’, and ‘extramural activities’, I found her staring at me in a way that I would stare at a red traffic light. Meanwhile, I failed to register that her computer was pinging with notifications and that maybe 8am on a Monday morning was not the best time to approach her with my prolonged verbal onslaught.

To Petra’s credit, she remained polite and handed me a stack of papers explaining the enrollment process. In Afrikaans. (Fast forward to later that day when Google Translate and I became best friends).

 

Choose the right time and place when practising English.

In summary, I learnt to be picky. I learnt to pick the right time, place – and, when unluckily finding someone related to The Grinch – the person. Luckily, I would venture to say that the latter is a pretty rare occurrence. Unless you plan on routinely accosting people at 8am on a Monday.

3. You’re Not as Bad as You Think

Having had many speaking sessions with students over the years, I can confidently say that however bad you think you are at English, you’re probably being overly critical. I am not saying that you’re not making mistakes all over the place. No. What I’m saying is that in many instances, I’ve found that I’m able to understand students perfectly well, in spite of these mistakes.

You may have seen that famous experiment involving a text with missing letters, challenging reader to see if they could still understand it. Surprisingly, people could. That’s because people could infer/guess the missing letters just by using the surrounding text. It’s like we all have this inbuilt autocorrect function (just more accurate than the one on our phones).

I’m not saying that there won’t be some misunderstandings and things won’t get lost in translation, but more often than not, I’ve been able to follow what my students are saying, even when they are at a lower level, just by ‘filling in the blanks’, as people did with that text experiment.

There are many things that contribute to meaning, including facial expressions, body language, and contextual clues. The latter is one reason I encourage students to get out into the real world. For example, if someone asks a waiter for ‘other coffee’, and they’re holding their current empty cup of coffee, it doesn’t take a genius to autocorrect what they said.

4. Remember that it is a Process

Do you recall when you learnt how to ride a bike, or to swim, or do a handstand? You didn’t master it overnight – it took many attempts, falls, and a lot of water up your nose before you felt confident. My point is that we should remember that learning a language is also a process. You will make mistakes. In class I like to say that I love mistakes. Why? Because that’s how we learn. When you rode too fast around a corner and crashed into a bush, you probably learnt not to do that next time (or maybe you didn’t and ended up with quite a few scrapes and bruises a few times before you learnt the lesson).

You seldom see a kid just giving up after one try. Okay, to be fair, I still can’t do a handstand because I didn’t attempt it again after wiping out once, but I can ride and swim pretty well. I reckon if I had kept on trying, I could do a decent handstand now. But it’s never too late (if you see a middle-aged person at the park trying to do handstands, then you know who it is!).

 

Don’t forget to acknowledge your progress when learning English,
not just your mistakes!

Back to the moral of the story: it’s a guarantee that you will make mistakes when speaking. But you’ll quickly learn from them (maybe someone will bring you potatoes instead of apples, for example), and keep improving.

In summary, try to turn off your inner critic. If it makes you feel better, tell the person you’re speaking with that you’re learning English and you appreciate their patience. Don’t be afraid to ask: “Sorry, what is the word for this?” And thank them afterwards. More than likely they will be happy that they’ve helped you. There’s one more thing I’d like to add, which is that I think it’s an amazing feat to learn another language. You should give yourself a pat on the back!

Final Thoughts

That’s a wrap, folks. I hope you’ve found some inspiration in this post to pluck up the courage to speak in English – whether it’s in the classroom, or outside in the real world. Don’t forget to have fun – it’s okay to laugh at your mistakes, especially when they are funny. Languages foibles can be hilarious. Once a student of mine, who often substituted the ‘s’ sound for ‘sh’, said the words: ‘sit in a chair’. I think you can guess what it came out as. We laughed so much, and he knew I was laughing with him, not at him.

In conclusion, have fun, be brave and don’t be afraid to wipe out. Just like when you were learning to ride a bike.