Breeding Confidence
What you actually need to speak a second language
I need to be better
How many times have you said this to yourself at one obstacle or another?
When we find ourselves in a situation outside our comfort zone, forced to do something we are not completely comfortable with, it brings to light the weaknesses we have and humans in general are not good at dealing with their own weaknesses. This is however, in most cases, inevitable and (although it may not seem it at the time) we can use this to our advantage.
Yes, it sounds cliche, but the fact that we recognise our own weaknesses is one of our strongest abilities. This is what evolution is all about: the survival of the fittest (the most adaptable to new situations), and life in the modern world is full of new situations. People who do not recognise points for improvement often go through life without stretching themselves and therefore stagnating into a rather uninspiring lifestyle. It can be a very demoralizing fact to face, that you are incapable of dealing with something to the level you would like to, but being able to put yourself in a situation where you have to “do or die” (and come through to the other side with your head held high) is probably one of the best ways you can actually learn something.
The fact is that we do not notice something is missing until the moment you need it and it is not there, so if you do not put yourself in a situation which will show you the things that are missing, then you will probably never know they are not there. Even worse than this is actively avoiding situations that may lead to you being outside of your comfort zone in the fear that you may be “found wanting”, causing embarrassment and jokes to be made at your expense.
What’s essencial
In my time learning Portuguese and teaching English, I have found one quality absolutely essential: Confidence.
Having the confidence to step outside your comfort zone, and being confident in yourself and your own abilities. Speaking about your own life to (quite often) total strangers when you are performing your classes as a teacher is sometimes difficult. Maybe you have had a bad day, your boss hasn’t paid you properly, or maybe you just don’t feel like talking; but the students are paying for your time and they expect to receive value for money, as anyone should.
I have always been aware of my shortcomings and before becoming a teacher I used to let these take control of my life. When I became an English teacher (studying Portuguese for 5 years) I thought I could speak Portuguese quite well, but there was one colleague who would really show me how wrong I was. He would call me stupid, or worse, and make me feel quite negative about myself. However, after speaking with one of my friends about the situation at work I came to the opinion that this was a problem with him and not me. I was already aware of the things I needed to improve, and the only person responsible for improving them was me. With this newly found wisdom I could not get insulted by someone laughing at me, because I know it is something that needs improving, but at the same time the only person that could change this was me anyway. I found a passage from Game of Thrones very interesting, because it summarises exactly the frame of mind you need.
“Let me give you some counsel, bastard. Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.” (Martin, 2011)
I have always been quite open to meeting new people, and this made my job as an English teacher a really pleasurable experience. Sharing my life and experiences with everyone who walks through the door is daunting to some people, but I loved it. This happy go lucky approach to life, and the fact I don’t have a problem speaking with people I don’t know, helped a lot in how I learnt Portuguese. I would always sit in the “copo sujo” across the road from my house and have some beers with the locals. Jokes, tales, and sometimes straight up BS, all made up part of my evenings spent in this very Brazilian atmosphere.
I was always a very strong believer of this:
What is important when you are learning a new language is that you try and make it a “do or die” experience. It obviously isn’t going to be that extreme as it is usually in the safe environment of a classroom or your own house, but what I want to express is the idea that there has to be an element of risk, the possibility of making a mistake and realising it for yourself. Babies learn in this manner, and they are taught to be embarrassed but the adults who teach them. Until they learn about embarrassment, children will experiment with words until they find the correct context. Your experience will be different, and you will need to de-evolve your natural feeling of embarrassment about mistakes, as this will seriously hold you back.
Going back to my first teaching experience, I worked with someone who would constantly drive me insane about speaking like a “gringo”: laughing at my gringo portuguese to the point I nearly gave up learning it altogether. It is such a “downer” when you think you have done really well to get to where you are, for someone to come and say you don’t speak properly. It irritates me to this day how some people focus on English being “American’’ or “British”. Unfortunately there are hundreds of English accents and not all follow the same grammatical “norms’’ as the British Received Pronunciation (RP) or American Standard Pronunciation. It is so common to see a teacher who concentrates on the errors made in grammar and pronunciation, saying that you need to speak like “this” (usually “the queen’s English” or RP) to speak properly, but the fact is there are very few people who actually speak like this in the UK, and they are usually newsreaders on the BBC.
And do you know what?
It wasn’t until I started doing languages in university that I realised something. Even though, living in the UK, you see people with non-native accents “day in, day out” (e.g French, German, Indian, Chinese [The UK is very multicultural]), I never noticed how many English accents there are throughout the country, and these are the ones you will come across. You are not going to see the queen walking around London.
It doesn’t matter what you sound like. I have never seen a French person apologising for their “terrible” English. Their accent may be strong, and if you have never heard it before it is probably very difficult to understand, but it is not wrong — It is simply different.
Going back to RP (Received Pronunciation) or “the Queen’s English”, as I said before, only about 3% of the UK population speak with this accent. You are far more likely to come across local dialects and accents which are sometimes more difficult to understand than some of the international accents, so I would suggest that you focus on getting your English clear enough to be understood by anyone and do not try and speak like someone else because you think it will be easier to understand. Another thing you need to do is to make sure you listen to a wide range of different accents. Your teacher will speak with one accent, but you will hear many others when travelling, so do not fixate on the idea that everyone will sound like your teacher, because they most certainly will not.
To sum up
In my humble opinion, it is not the accent that defines the ability to talk in English, but the confidence to be able to communicate. There will be certain limits as to what is acceptable in terms of testing and qualifications, but in real life you need to be able to communicate, and this will very rarely be with someone who speaks like Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth II.
- Be confident
- Make mistakes
- Don’t feel bad about needing to improve
- LEARN!
