As teachers, we are always saying “have a go” or “it’s ok to make mistakes” even “mistakes help us to learn”. But does that help us to get the confidence we need ? Not really they are just word.
So how do you become confident in a second language?
There is one great technique that I have found has worked for my students. Before I explain the idea let me share a bit of history.
Try Listening to the Post!
I have an older sister, she is academically brilliant, but honestly was not the best singer in the world. However, the school curriculum required her to sing. She would practice at home and it was rarely more than mediocre. One day in a fit of rage at her failure she said “If only I could sing like Debs”. Debs was a girl that neither of us liked. She was perfect and did well at everything. The kind of student parents secretly wished their children would emulate. To us, she wasn’t a good student she was simply boring. There was nothing fun or interesting about her. She was just tedious. My sister in her frustration then proceeded to imitate Debs, and she had never sung so well in her life. We had an amazing evening singing loads of different songs ‘in the style of Debs’. For all of them, my sister performance was close to perfect. The notes to correct, her voice projected across the room, she had never sung this well before. At the end of the week, she did her test and got her best music note ever. This was not something I had thought about much after leaving school, but it became relevant again after I moved to France.
My French was basic. My husband’s was non-existent. It was winter and we were looking to buy some wood for our fire. We looked in the obvious places and couldn’t understand why it was so expensive. A French friend, who sadly didn’t live near us, told us that we had to find a place and buy it directly from the people who owned the land. She said to look for signs at the side of the road advertising wood for sale. After a week or so of not seeing any signs around my husband announced that he knew the solution. I was feeling pretty beaten by everything at the time. I had spoken to my sister who was so excited about our move to France and was going on about French and how much she had enjoyed living and studying in France when she was a student. I was going through a phase of feeling completely inadequate. I sat in the car and my husband drove, he said he wasn’t exactly sure of the place but he had seen wood piled up and was sure we could buy wood cheap there.
After about forty minutes he found the place. They certainly had wood. It was a logging company. It was raining and there we huge tractors dragging logs into the processing plant at the far end. Just near the gate was a porter cabin. My husband pulled up outside and said “Go on. See if they will sell us some wood?” I sat in the car and thought about my sister’s idea that it was some amazingly exciting adventure that I was on, and compared it to the reality. There were a lot of differences. Then I wondered how she would cope with this situation. I realised that she would see this as an adventure and would bound up to the porter cabin and just start talking. So I took a deep breath, put on a smile and pretended in my head that I was her. I did it. I spoke to a bunch of complete strangers about something I knew nothing about and had no useful vocabulary for (I had never even bought wood in England since I had always lived in central London).
We all have a confident person inside. Sometimes we can’t find them. Sometimes they go and hide and leave us open to our fears. So you have two choices. The first is to imagine you as that confident person you could be in the right situation and pretend to be that person every time your speak English. Or you can cheat and think of someone you know who is incredibly confident and just pretend to be them.
You may think this won’t work but there is now even research to back this up. There is a wonderful TED talk but Amy Cuddy called Fake it ‘Till you make it. I recommend all my students listen to this talk, but just once, but as many times as it takes to absorb the importance of what she is saying.
Believe in yourself as much as we believe in you and you WILL succeed!