Comparing your language to others.
This is something that your ego is trying to do – you automatically compare the words you use with the language of your chat partner or another person whose English is better.
Of course, you don’t want to sound too simple and try to match their language. And this is where it goes wrong – you try to use more difficult words and make difficult sentences and at the end you mess up the whole speech!
This can happen especially when you speak to a native English speaker and his confidence and fluent speech starts to make you feel much worse than you actually are. Well – the advice in this case is – don’t you ever dare to think like that!!!
It is your English, it is YOU who speaks it and as far as others can get you and you can understand them – everything is perfect!
Trying to make it too simple to explain things to those whose English is bad.
You are talking to someone whose English is considerably worse than yours and to make the communication successful you are forced to choose very simple words.
At this stage you can start losing the normal speech again because the deliberate simplifying of the language and speaking with wrong grammar subconsciously makes you feel as if this is how you really speak. And at the end it can really lead to you start stumbling upon words and experience the inability to speak normally.
You have 2 options here – either you continue with speaking as you normally would or you adjust to the needs of the other person.
In the first case you risk to make the other party embarrassed and even if he or she nods approvingly it’s just because they’re too shy to admit that they didn’t get it. So what was the point of talking here at all?
However, you can leave the responsibility to that other person and after all – if they don’t get something, they have to make it clear to you, don’t they?
In the second case you risk to get messed up yourself therefore you have to focus upon your speech and force yourself not to start losing the confidence. Well, I think the first approach is the right one – do what suits you best!
If the person chatting to you doesn’t get something – they have to ask you to explain the things. It is, after all, going to be very beneficial to them to learn something more from the English language.
When you can’t yet speak with 100% confidence – don’t try to get it too fast.
At most of the times this is about trying to match the speed of your chatting partner or outperform yourself because of a big ego.
Stick this into your head – there’s nothing wrong with speaking slowly and sometimes to think of the right word. It’s by far better than trying to speak too fast and start mixing everything in a mish-mash!
And if you’re a person who naturally speaks slowly – that’s completely fine! Don’t try to change your nature. This urge to speed up would usually happen when you want to make a really good impression about yourself – in a front of the opposite sex, for instance.
