What's your biggest fear when speaking English?

Answer 1

I learned English as a foreign language. Born and raised in China, I remember myself fearing mispronouncing words whenever I spoke, unwilling to use vocabulary that I'm not sure of how to pronounce for fear of being ridiculed or mocked at. During my long and arduous journey of perfecting my English abilities and learning other languages, I've come to realize that your accuracy of pronunciation really doesn't matter as much as you may think in daily conversation. Of course there is merit in trying to improve, but the fact is that the people I was talking with (especially native speakers) couldn't care less about whether or not I was speaking with a perfect accent. It's completely natural for all beginners to not "master" pronunciation, and the fear of "doing it wrong" is often the biggest deterrent that I, and a lot of my students now, will ever face.

Another thing I've noticed during my years teaching for the TOEFL is that when students practice for the speaking section, they often begin to get super nervous after making one small grammatical mistake, causing them to mess up the rest of their sentence and become super flustered. There is merit in trying to correct your grammatical mistakes, but students often overdo this and become very embarrassed by one small error, compromising their comprehensibility when conversing with someone else. When you make a mistake while speaking (which is almost unavoidable), remember that you should never compromise the ability for someone else to understand you, and if the mistake is small, simply carry on with your sentence. People will notice/care less than you expect.

Answer 2

I taught hundreds of students who were learning English and for most of them their biggest fear was being "wrong." Sometimes my students were afraid to raise their hands to give an answer (even when they knew the answer!) because they were afraid their pronunciation would be incorrect or they were afraid of not being as proficient as some of their peers. Sometimes they feared others would think they were not smart.

I often reminded my students that their ability in a language is not an indication of their intelligence. I told them a story of a professor from China who was learning English. In his native language he was a genius with a Ph.D! Yet, he was in the early stages of learning English and was using basic phrases, such as "I have a cat." He was not ignorant. He was not wrong. He was not afraid to speak in English, even if it was basic. He was very intelligent and he was learning something new!

Learning a new language can be scary (I'm trying to learn Spanish myself!). Accept that mistakes are going to be a natural part of the process. In fact, we often learn more from our mistakes than from getting everything perfect all the time! Be kind to yourself and remember...this is a learning process that takes time. The more you practice and try in spite of your fears, the more the fears will fade.

Best of luck!

Answer 3

One of the scary things is needing to listen carefully to what the other English speaker is saying when in a conversation. That requires concentration, and also humility, as you may need to ask the other person to repeat what they just said. A particular accent that the other person has can add to the difficulty. Showing interest in what the other person is saying can help them to be more patient with you.