I'm afraid of Making Mistakes

by Amal
(Saudi Arabia)

I like speaking English a lot but I'm afraid of making mistake and just want some good steps and advice to overcome this fear. Thanks!

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Mar 22, 2011
 Overcome fear of making mistakes in English
by: Robby Kukurs

Hi Amal,

There's no better way to overcome your fear of making mistakes than engaging in conversations with other English speaking people. Practice makes one perfect!

There are a number of techniques, though, you may want to implement in order to make fewer mistakes, and that in turn will lead to higher confidence and less fear down the line.

Technique #1 - slow down when speaking! It's typical for us, foreign English speakers, trying to match native speakers' speed of speech and it results in a lot of mistakes when speaking. When you feel onset of fear before a conversation, take a few deep breaths, and force your self to speak slowly and choose words with care.

If the previous doesn't really work -
Technique #2 - just jump into a conversation! You're afraid of making mistakes? Force yourself to forget about it by engaging into that conversation and keep repeating to yourself - "Even if I make mistakes, it's not a big deal. I don't CARE if I make mistakes because I KNOW that my English is fluent and what the other person thinks is irrelevant to me."

It that doesn't work - Technique #3 - try the opposite to the first technique. Increase your speaking speed as sometimes if you speak slowly, you may find yourself analyzing your speech too much and it results in making mistakes.

Also bear in mind that if you try to speak with a proper English pronunciation, it may hamper your speech too. Try to find the balance between where you feel comfortable and where your pronunciation is as close to ideal as possible.

All aforementioned techniques should eliminate most of mistakes you're making and that in turn should lead to less fear and bigger confidence.

Hope this helps,

Robby
P.S.
The best way to overcome fear is to meditate. Visualization and auto-suggestion are brilliant tools which can help you lessen your fear and build your confidence.
Module 2 in the English Harmony System 2.0 is packed full with meditation lessons with one goal in mind - increasing foreign English speakers' confidence.

Robby Kukurs is the creator of www.englishharmony.com, a website he created in 2007 to help struggling foreign English speakers gain real English fluency.

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