Speak Less, Say More: The Secret to Instant English Confidence | Easy English Podcast

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1. 0:01Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
2. 0:05I'm your host, Oliver, and as always, you are welcome to another great episode where we are going to learn some English
3. 0:15vocabulary. Have you ever had this experience? Perhaps you're at a party, maybe you're in class speaking in English.
4. 0:25You're in your job and you know exactly what you want to say in English. But the moment that you open
5. 0:34your mouth to start speaking, your heart starts to beat faster. Your hands start to get a little
6. 0:42bit sweaty perhaps, and your voice starts to become weaker or it starts to shake. Suddenly you might even forget
7. 0:52the simplest of words. It's a really horrible feeling to be honest, but it's something that most people experience at
8. 1:02some point during their language learning process.
9. 1:06And usually this feeling makes you want to speak a lot less.
10. 1:12It makes you want to not really practice as much as well.
11. 1:16But here's the truth. Confidence is not a lack of fear, it's the ability to still speak and continue while you
12. 1:26feel those feelings. And today we're going to talk about exactly that topic about confidence in English.
13. 1:37So with your English skills, how can you be more confident to, you know, feel less nervous about speaking and also how you
14. 1:48can sound more confident in English as well?
15. 1:53And we'll look a little bit about why being perfect is actually the enemy. It's the opposite of being
16. 2:01confident in most cases. So as always, I usually like to do a key vocabulary session at the start of each episode where
17. 2:11I will introduce for you 5 new keywords and phrases that I want you to listen for in today's episode before I read the first
18. 2:22word. Make sure that you've followed and subscribed to the Easy English Podcast if you're new here for new episodes every single week.
19. 2:33I'm proud to say it's been over one year now where I haven't missed a single episode, a single weekly episode.
20. 2:42Every Monday we have had an episode of the Easy English Podcast. So it's been a lot of work, but I am glad that we are growing. Let's take a look at our key
21. 2:53vocabulary for today's episode. The first word is a phrase.
22. 2:59It is self-conscious. So this is an adjective rather not a phrase. And to be self-conscious means
23. 3:07to feel nervous about what other people think about you.
24. 3:13So when you're feeling self-conscious, you're maybe thinking, oh these people are looking at me, they're thinking about me, they're talking about me.
25. 3:24That is self-conscious behaviour.
26. 3:28For example, I felt very self-conscious during my presentation. I felt like everyone was looking
27. 3:37and thinking about me. Our next word today is a verb and we're going to learn the phrase here and that is to hesitate. So the verb is to hesitate.
28. 3:49And to hesitate means to pause before saying something, usually because you're you're nervous. So if you hesitate, you're a
29. 3:59little bit nervous or you're not confident, I hesitated and lost
30. 4:05my chance to speak. So perhaps you've had that in a conversation where you're chatting with some people and
31. 4:14then you hesitate with your answer and they already move on to the next topic or the next part of the conversation.
32. 4:23You hesitated and you lost your chance to speak.
33. 4:27Our next phrase is to own it. To own it.
34. 4:33And this is a phrase and it means to act with total, complete confidence, even if you make a mistake.
35. 4:45So if you say something wrong, you can own it and continue to move forward. You continue to just act with full confidence even though you've made the mistake.
36. 4:57You owned it. Our 4th 1 today is a word and it is a nine. And that nine is mindset.
37. 5:07Mindset and your mindset is your way of thinking and your opinions. So we can say that if someone
38. 5:17has a growth mindset, they are thinking about improving.
39. 5:22They have the opinion and the mindset that they want to improve. And our final word today for today's vocabulary section is assertive.
40. 5:34Assertive, a great adjective. To be assertive is to have or show a confident and sometimes forceful personality.
41. 5:47So you don't need perfect English or perfect grammar to be assertive in a meeting. All right, That is our words for
42. 5:57today. If you want additional key vocabulary as well as the digital flip cards for these and
43. 6:05vocabulary and episode transcripts for each episode of the Easy English Podcast as well as bonus episodes and content,
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47. 6:38It allows me to put more time into this, to invest into it, and to grow the podcast. So thank you to all of my
48. 6:46patrons for supporting the show, and I really, really appreciate each and everyone of you. OK, let's continue.
49. 6:58Most learners often think that they will become confident after they stop making mistakes, or that once you reach a certain
50. 7:07level of English, you will start to become confident.
51. 7:11And while this is true that once you get more of a mastery of English, once you become a higher level, you'll probably
52. 7:19not think about it as much. But sometimes people think, you know, once I have learnt this many words, or once I understand
53. 7:30these tenses and I can use them, then I will feel more confident to speak in English. But it can actually work the
54. 7:39other way around. Confidence comes from actually making the mistakes and realising that nothing bad has happened. So realising that you can make
55. 7:50mistakes and it's OK, Think about it.
56. 7:55Have you ever been annoyed by a foreigner or someone from another country speaking your native language?
57. 8:05Have you ever been annoyed when they had an accent or they made a grammar mistake? Probably not.
58. 8:12You were probably impressed that they were even trying.
59. 8:16And this perfection trap is something that I see a lot with English students. It's when you're trying to be 100% correct or you're stressed about making mistakes.
60. 8:29And I've made episodes about that before, talking about the fear of mistakes, the fear of failure.
61. 8:36So I'm not going to talk specifically about that today, but this idea of trying to be perfect is a bad one.
62. 8:46And it does create what we can call a brain fog.
63. 8:50So you're focusing too much on grammar or vocabulary or generally your English rather than the moment, rather than the
64. 9:00person that's in front of you, the person that you're talking to. And I see it time and time again where students freeze up and they overthink what is going on.
65. 9:11Whereas they do have the vocabulary there, even if it's more simple, they can just say it and use it, and it would be
66. 9:19so much less stressful than trying to get everything right.
67. 9:28And the ironic thing that I notice is when people stop trying to be perfect or they stop obsessing about speaking
68. 9:37correctly, they usually start to make fewer mistakes because their brain relaxes. They start to have better
69. 9:47vocabulary and ultimately they start to sound more fluent because they're not pausing as much, they're not stressing as
70. 9:55much, and the whole thing becomes a lot more natural.
71. 10:00One of the biggest confidence killers for many people is silence. So once you are when you're speaking and you're trying to find a word and perhaps you're
72. 10:11searching for it and there's a long awkward pause or you have a moment where you, you, you're, you're saying something and you
73. 10:19can't remember what you're saying or maybe what comes next, how to correctly grammatically phrase this.
74. 10:27And you feel pressure and a lot of people begin to panic inside.
75. 10:33And it can cause stress. It can cause you to feel more anxious and then for you to make more mistakes.
76. 10:40But the best way, and I always advise the number one way to deal with this is to use fillers.
77. 10:48Fillers get a bad name. People say it's bad, it's not proper English, you know, these all of those things.
78. 10:57Of course you don't want to have it too much in your speech.
79. 11:00But fillers are natural, and in fact, native speakers use them all the time, including me in this podcast.
80. 11:08If I talked entirely without fillers, if I spoke without fillers, I think my speech would probably be a lot less natural
81. 11:19because I like to talk. I do this podcast recording in one tick. So I just do one shot the whole way through and I edit, you know, little pauses and things
82. 11:29like that. But generally I like to just talk as if I'm talking to my friends because you are all my supporters and friends and members of this community.
83. 11:41So naturally there are going to be filler words, but they can help you while your brain is trying to find what comes next.
84. 11:51And there are some that you can use which are more natural.
85. 11:54And it's not simply, umm, or, uh, but a little bit better than that. You could try using, for
86. 12:00example, actually or well, or you know, or to be honest, you know, when you're thinking about what to say.
87. 12:11Or you could simply say, let me think about that for a second.
88. 12:15And while you're saying that while you're creating the pause, your brain is still working in the background.
89. 12:24You're buying yourself some time and you're you're taking that pressure and stress off of yourself.
90. 12:30When you have like an entirely silent pause and a panic, it makes it look more like you're stuck rather than you're thinking. But when you use a filler, it
91. 12:41makes it seem like you're thinking in a natural way, and it buys you a few seconds of time for your brain to find the
92. 12:49word or the grammar that comes next without stressing about it.
93. 12:55It's a small trick, but it can make you look and feel a lot more assertive with your English.
94. 13:04Another thing that I see sometimes is that when people get nervous, sometimes they hide their mistakes by using long
95. 13:13complicated sentences. So they might over explain things or try to use big words, complicated words perhaps to
96. 13:23show that they have good English.
97. 13:26But long sentences are difficult, and particularly if you're in more of a stressful conversation or you're nervous,
98. 13:34you're much more likely to make mistakes, maybe to get tripped up on those sentences and find parts where you pause.
99. 13:44So I always recommend that if you can explain something complicated using simple words, you probably should do it.
100. 13:52And it shows that you're actually understanding and confident about what you're talking about, rather than trying to over explain it and make it seem like you're using
101. 14:02much more complicated words than are actually needed.
102. 14:07Simple is usually more effective, particularly in the day-to-day. You know when you go to the shop or you meet someone in person, perhaps that you haven't met
103. 14:17before, like a new friend or a language partner.
104. 14:22You shouldn't be with that mentality of trying to impress with your English. You should be trying to make it as natural and as comfortable for yourself.
105. 14:32The goal always with English, particularly for most of our use, is to understand one another.
106. 14:39So you want to be clear, but you also want to to, to be understood and you want to understand the person that you're speaking with. That's it.
107. 14:50You know, with time, your English is going to get of course, more complicated. But trying to force that complexity, trying to make your English more complicated to show
108. 15:02that you have good English like that is not the right attitude or mentality to approach speaking, in my opinion.
109. 15:11It will create more of a pressure and a stress on yourself and also create more sort of issues in speech where
110. 15:20you're you're making more pauses, thinking of more things.
111. 15:24And that's not good for confidence.
112. 15:29But every mistake that you do make and learning that those mistakes are good and nothing bad happens afterwards will
113. 15:37build your confidence over time. OK, so let's take a break and go to our listener spotlight. Last week's episode was about
114. 15:47understanding accents, different accents in English and I asked what accent in English do you find the hardest?
115. 15:58And it could be any from around the world.
116. 16:01And I got quite a few answers of people telling me which accent they find difficult. If you haven't seen that episode yet, make sure to go to last week's episode and watch or
117. 16:12listen to it. It was a really great topic and a lot of fun to make. The first comment I want to read
118. 16:20is from Bo and Bo said Hi Oliver, I'm Bo.
119. 16:25I've studied British English since middle school, so even though the American accent is widely used, it's still really
120. 16:34hard for me. After listening to this episode, I tried listening to some American podcasts.
121. 16:42I found that although I listen to your and BBC podcast everyday and can understand 95% without subtitles, it's difficult to
122. 16:53catch what the American hosts say.
123. 16:57Even with subtitles, I still need to pause and rewind to listen again. I also found a podcast with an
124. 17:08Indian accent. Following your advice, I've decided to listen to podcasts with different accents every day. I hope I can understand them as
125. 17:20well as I understand yours soon. Excellent comment though.
126. 17:25Really, really well written and it's interesting to hear that you struggle more with the American accent, but it makes sense because you have studied with the British accent for so
127. 17:37long. I find when I speak to people, most people tend to find the American accent easier, but I
128. 17:45think it's because a lot of people use American media and then they get used to it. So it's interesting to hear the opposite. Thank you so much for your
129. 17:55comment. That's a really, really great comment and I hope to see you in the comment section again.
130. 18:02OK. The next comment, and I hope I say your name correctly, is from Gazella or Gisella maybe I.
131. 18:11Hi Oliver, I'm so glad to hear your podcast.
132. 18:14It's really important to be aware of accents.
133. 18:18The hardest accent for me to understand is the Australian accent. Wow, yes the Australian accent can be quite a difficult one. I think Australians speak very
134. 18:29differently from pretty much every other country that speaks English. So yeah, that's that's a very, very good one. Thank you for your comment.
135. 18:40Another great comment from kiddo.
136. 18:43And they said, hello, Oliver picked your podcast for the first time today. You're very welcome.
137. 18:49Welcome to the show. You have a new follower from now on. Thank you very much.
138. 18:55Thank you for your job here. Great for me because I need to learn and practice English much more than before.
139. 19:02Answer to your question today, I often struggle with American English because Americans often speak in a mumbling sound, they
140. 19:12cut letters, etcetera. So I think it's slang that makes it difficult to understand. Yeah, very, very true.
141. 19:21Guido. Americans can speak a little bit mumbly, but I would also say a lot of different accents in Britain, in the UK can be quite mumbly as well, in my opinion.
142. 19:33I think in the episode I talked about the Scottish accent, which I love, but it can be quite mumbly for me.
143. 19:42Thank you for all your lovely comments for today's episode or for that last episode. And that brings us to today's question that I would like you to answer.
144. 19:54Tell me about how you feel when you speak in English.
145. 19:59Do you feel nervous? Do you feel stressed sometimes?
146. 20:04Do you think about what you're saying?
147. 20:07Or do you feel relaxed? Do you enjoy it?
148. 20:10Tell me about your experience speaking English.
149. 20:14How do you feel when you speak English?
150. 20:19I look forward to reading your comments and I will pick some of them and read them out in next week's episode.
151. 20:26So confidence is not a gift that you're simply born with, it's something that you develop from experience.
152. 20:37It's like a muscle that you're training and building with your English. Every time you speak English, even though you feel a little bit scared or nervous, you're
153. 20:47getting a little bit stronger and a little bit more confident.
154. 20:53So stop waiting for perfection. Stop waiting for you to improve before you actually do it, which will make you improve and start
155. 21:04owning your mistakes, owning your English, use some fillers to buy time, speak simple and just try to reduce the stress so
156. 21:15that you actually do it. And when you make mistakes, own them and learn from them, and you'll realise there's nothing bad about it. So thank you so much for
157. 21:25listening to today's episode. I hope this was encouraging, I hope it was helpful, and I hope it was interesting for you.
158. 21:33Remember to subscribe to the Patreon if you want to support the show a little bit further and get some additional benefits. Thank you very much for listening and I hope to see you in the next episode.
159. 21:45Goodbye.