· Are you shy when you’re speaking a foreign language?
· Do you find it difficult to speak sometimes when you’re practicing English?
· Do you feel embarrassed?
· Are you afraid you’ll make mistakes and look foolish?
· Are you quiet in class when others are speaking a lot?
· Do you feel like your English level is worse than everybody else’s?
Fear not! You are not alone! A lot of people feel the same sense of embarrassment or shyness when they practice a second language. After all, they are practicing a skill that they have not yet fully mastered, and when we’re starting to learn a language, we naturally make a lot of mistakes. In fact, it’s impossible to learn without making mistakes. It’s part of the process by which we get new knowledge, put it into practice in the real world, and use the reactions we experience with other people to calibrate and adjust.
Mistakes Are Normal
This is the way we increase our understanding of the language, our power to remember words and phrases, and our overall language skills. Without practicing, we can’t reach our learning goals. Do you think you could learn to play guitar by reading a book about it and never picking up a real guitar to practice what you’ve read? Of course, that won’t work. And languages are very similar. They are a combination of knowledge skills and motor skills, and we need to use both our brains and our bodies to speak. The process of trying to communicate, of making mistakes, getting feedback from our partners and teachers, and starting the process all over again with our updated knowledge is central to language learning.
So don’t be afraid to make mistakes; we need them! And remember, even the most advanced learners make mistakes!
What Can We Do To Beat The Fear?
Of course, it’s easy to say, ‘don’t be afraid to make mistakes when you’re practicing!’ That doesn’t mean it’s easy to actually do it! Those bad feelings we talked about before are difficult to control, and can be a very real barrier to practice, and to learning. So, what can we do about it? Well, we can borrow some concepts from psychology and psychotherapy to help us deal with negative feelings. In a therapy called Exposure Therapy related to overcoming fear, therapists instruct their clients to face their fears, just a little at first, then a little more, and then a little more after that. In this way, they help their clients to see that the things they are afraid of are not so bad. Slowly but surely, they build up the confidence to face the fearful situation, until finally they can fearlessly do whatever it is that they once were afraid to do. What a triumph!
To give an example, if a person is afraid of dogs, the therapist might first have the client interact with a toy dog. That’s not so scary, right? Well, for the client, it might cause some anxiety, but not as much as interacting with a real dog. After the client gets comfortable with the toy dog, the therapist might show the client some photos of big dogs, and after that might introduce the client to a real-life cute small puppy, with all these escalations leading eventually to an interaction between the client and a real-life large dog, when the client has become confident enough to face that situation. This controlled process of continuously stepping up the intensity of the interaction helps the scared person to get used to each situation and be ready for the next one, and to lose their fear and inhibition along the way!
So How Can All This Help You In Your Language Learning Journey?
Well, if you have bad feelings when you try to practice English, you can try this method. Start off with very small, fast interactions in English, and build up to longer, more complex ones. For example, a short interaction might be a quick greeting. Say ‘good morning’ to the shop assistant or the secretary at your English academy. They will say ‘good morning’ back to you, probably with a smile, and that’s it! Well done, you’ve just had a full interaction in English with another person! After doing this a few times, you’ll begin to feel comfortable and ready to escalate.
Next step: decide to say one full, long sentence to your teacher or another student, for example, ‘it’s a beautiful day today so I’m going to the park.’ You can prepare the sentence beforehand, and you should resolve to not worry about whether they answer or not. The point is to say your sentence and that’s it: interaction finished! If they answer and you don’t understand, no problem! Smile and walk away. If they answer and you do understand, even better! Do the same thing again with other people until you feel comfortable, then you’ll be ready to escalate again. Soon, you’ll be engaging in conversations around the table in the reception area at your academy, and other students will be impressed by your speaking skills!
The Goal
Your goal should be to realize that everyone who is learning a language faces the fear of making mistakes and looking foolish, but that this fear needn’t stop us from practicing and learning. The reality is that most people don’t care if you make mistakes, they want to help you learn, and they want to practice with you.