Building Confidence as a Better English Speaking

Your thing comes out more naturally. Next, part of being relaxed means to be confident. Be confident in yourself. Now, I know that a lot of people and I've experienced this with tons and tons of students. A lot of people think that somebody who's not speaking well might be, you know, an idiot. That's not the case. A lack of language does not equal a lack of intelligence. Okay, now if I go to China and I try to speak Chinese to people, I'm going to sound like an idiot. Does that mean I'm an idiot? No, it means I don't know Chinese. I can learn Chinese, I can practice Chinese, and eventually I will be a good Chinese speaker. But at the beginning, I'm going to sound like an idiot. Okay, so that's the one thing. Along with being confident, there's one thing I want everybody to understand. And I know you know this, but I will say it to you anyway. There's only one person on this planet who is qualified to judge you. Of course, employers can judge your qualifications for a job. A sports coach can judge your qualifications or your skills to be on a sports team, etc. only one person in the world can judge you as a person and that one person is you. So it doesn't matter what other people think about you, it doesn't matter what other people think about the way you're speaking. You know who you are. You know what you are. You know where you are in your learning process. So don't worry about what other people think. Now another thing, when you go in again, this is a part of people's human nature. But if you go to another country and you will meet some people, some locals, some of them will be patient, some of them will not. Some of them will look at you like struggling with the language and not want to talk to you. Some of them will try to help you. Okay. Don't worry about what people think. If somebody is not nice to you, go to the next person and try again.

Know Your Audience and Ignore Negative Reactions

But again, the very important know your audience. Know who you're talking to. Now, if you're going to try to basically put together a good sentence, if you're going to try to improve your English, there are people you're going to try hard to have a good sentence with, and there are people you're just going to try to get an idea across. Okay. Let me give you an example. If you're getting on a bus, you go to New York City. Your English is still a little bit, you know, high beginner, low, intermediate. You're getting on a bus in New York City. Don't try to tell the bus driver a perfect sentence. Don't try to make your question perfect. Just get the idea across.

Example: Communicating in Tokyo with Limited Japanese

Let me give you an anecdote, okay? A little story from my experience. I lived in Tokyo for for a bunch of years, and at the beginning I'm a very adventurous. Sorry. I'm a very adventurous guy. I like to travel around, you know, I like to go get lost in a city and find my way back. So I would go get lost. I had very few words then in Japanese, and I got lost in this one little town in, you know, like one of the little suburb of Tokyo. And I was getting a little bit tired and I wanted to go home. So I didn't know where the train station was. I didn't know which way to go. There's no such thing as north, east, southwest. It's just everything is a big sprawl. So I went looking for a Japanese person, you know, one who wouldn't run away from me because they didn't want to practice their English. I found a Japanese person who would stop and listen to me, and I would say, Sumi, my son. Then Doko. That's all I would say. Excuse me. Train where? And of course this person would point out the way or even walk me to the train station. I get on a train, I go home, I take a nap. I'm happy, right? But if I were so worried about getting a full sentence, like saying the full sentence perfectly, excuse me, can you tell me how I can get to the train station? I would still be lost in that little suburb today. I went, I got my message across, I got home. So I'm actually going to jump around with all these tips. Build vocab first.

Focus on Building Vocabulary First

Vocabulary is the most important thing you can do in terms of learning English. A lot of people worry so much about the grammar that they can't put together a sentence, and they get panicked and they get nervous. So let me actually stick on to the vocab a little bit. I want to give you an analogy. Okay. Like I'm going to compare, uh, learning English to doing something else. Let's say you want to build a model house and you have, you know, those like the popsicle sticks, like little sticks, and you have some glue and you're going to glue all your sticks together and you're going to build yourself a house. Okay. I want you to think of the sticks, the little wooden sticks. Okay. They kind of. You know, you have all these things you can. The doctor has them and you popsicles have them. You have all these sticks. The sticks are vocabulary. The glue is grammar. Now imagine trying to build a house and all you have is glue, and you're putting glue everywhere. And all you have is like a sticky fingers or sticky hands and a big mess. If all you have is vocabulary and no grammar you can build, you can still build somewhat something that looks like a house. Grammar gets you nothing. Vocabulary gets you something. Of course, you want to have both together at the end so you can have good English. So don't worry about just having vocabulary. Throw out your few words. Use your hands, use your face. Use things around you. Get your message across, but be confident and know who you're talking to if the person doesn't seem to be patient. Okay, thank you very much. Go to somebody else. Go to somebody sitting in a park enjoying the sunshine. Hi. Would you like to talk? Yeah, sure.

Don't Assume; Seek Helpful People

Let's have a conversation. Bus driver in New York. Don't think about it. Don't assume anything. Now, what does it mean to assume? To assume means to think something is true without having the facts. So don't assume that everybody is nice. Some people are not nice, and that's okay. Walk away from the not nice people. Find yourself a nice person. Don't assume that everybody is going to try to help you. Don't assume that everybody is judging you. Don't assume all kinds of things. Don't make assumptions about people. The only thing you need to understand is that you know who you are. You know what you need. Keep going until you find somebody who will help you. Okay, now the worst thing you can do. And I don't do this. I'm just saying to you now, don't go up to a stranger and say. Can I practice speaking my English with you? That's not going to work. That person gets nothing out of the deal. If you go to somebody.