[Part 1 of 4: The Big Myths Holding People back from speaking a foreign language with confidence and fluency.]

I am an Australian living in Guadalajara,Mexico with my Mexican husband and 2 half Aussie/half Mexican kids. I communicate successfully in Spanish with my husband’s family, the mothers and teachers from kinder, friends and community.

It wasn’t always this way. I spent the first 3 years here in Mexico feeling at times like a wall-flower observing and not participating as much as I would have liked to, feeling that I couldn’t express my full personality, going blank on vocabulary and verb conjugations that I either knew or felt that I should have known and at times I even escaped to closed toilet cubicles at events when I felt like a complete and utter idiot with my Spanish and had people laughing at my attempts and repeating them to others IN FRONT OF ME! (“I’d like to see you survive in my country all in English without the comfort of your friends and family!” I would inwardly fume.)

The 2 biggest problems that I have seen in so many of my students, clients family members and friends living and traveling across five continents over more than 20 years is that they nearly die of embarrassment when they need to speak to a native speaker in the target language, or after several stop-start attempts at learning the language, they feel that “It’s too hard; I’ll just never get it!” and give up!

The biggest myths that I have heard about achieving fluency in a foreign language are:

Myth #1:”I’m just not good with learning languages.” Rubbish! You learnt your own language, and you CAN reach fluency in another.

Myth #2: “I need to spend hours every day with my head in grammar books or listening to boring language CDs.” Sure that is one way (yawn), but not the ONLY way! If it was the answer to confident expression, then everyone who had bought a language program would speak with confidence and fluency.

Myth #3: “I will be wasting the time of the native speaker if I stumble over sentences and we will both only get frustrated. So what’s the point?” If you think like this, chances are that this will be your experience. And you will never reach your dream of conversing fluently in the target language. From my experience in many countries, most native speakers are actually really happy when you try to speak to them in their language. If they happen to answer you in English, it is usually because just like you, they want to practice their foreign language.

These myths are actually blocks that will only hold back your progress and keep you as an observing bystander until you choose to do something about it..

So what can you do? The good news is that I can help you!

In my next post I will share with you the 5 biggest mistakes that foreign language learners make when trying to reach confident expression and how you can avoid them.

Who do you know who has a strained relationship with their partner/spouse or in-laws due to their lack of speaking the other language? Or who is living in another country and feeling isolated due to struggling with the language? Please comment below. Let’s help these people! :)