Do you find public speaking scary?
Perhaps you get nervous before you speak English in front of lots of people, or even your own language.
My name is Oliver and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast, the best place to learn english and practice and improve your english listening skills while learning new vocabulary and phrases.
Today, we are going to talk about a very common feeling that many people experience not just english language learners and that is public speaking anxiety.
Public speaking anxiety, and we will look at what anxiety is in just a little moment.
This is a feeling public speaking anxiety of being nervous or worried when you have to speak in front of a group of people, whether it's a small group of friends, a classroom or even a larger audience.
But don't worry, we are going to talk about why we feel this way in general and, more importantly, we're going to share some simple and practical tips, and even some English phrases, to help you speak with more confidence.
But first, as always, I like to give you five pieces of key vocabulary to learn this episode.
And I want you to listen out for them, actively listen while listening to this episode and see if you can spot them.
Okay, let's go through our key vocabulary.
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Okay, our first piece of key vocabulary.
Word number one is anxiety.
Anxiety.
And this is a strong feeling of worry or nervousness.
When you feel nervous, often about something that is going to happen.
So public speaking can cause anxiety.
You will start to feel anxious.
That's the adjective version, anxious.
When it is coming up to something that you maybe don't want to do or something you find scary.
Let's say I'm going to deliver a presentation to lots of people.
I will feel anxiety, i will be anxious.
Okay, our second word is confidence.
Confidence this is also a noun and i'm sure you've heard it before.
Confidence is a feeling of belief in yourself and your abilities.
When you have confidence, you feel very sure of yourself.
You feel confident.
You feel like you can do it, right?
When you don't feel confident, or that feeling of confidence, you think oh, I don't know if I can do it.
I'm not sure.
That type of feeling.
Our third word is audience audience, and that's a noun as well, and an audience is the people who are listening to or watching a speech, presentation or performance.
It is normal to feel nervous or anxious in front of a large audience.
And finally, or sorry actually, our fourth word is one I've said a few times already in this episode.
Nervous, nervous, which is an adjective.
And that means feeling worried, stressed, or afraid.
It's usually a mixture, a combination of all of those things, right?
I always feel a bit nervous before an exam or a test.
And finally, the word gesture.
Gesture.
And that's a noun.
It is a movement of your hand, arm, or head to express a meaning.
Using a gesture can often help to explain an idea.
So giving the thumbs up, for example, like this, is a gesture, or even waving is a gesture as well.
So keep these words in mind as we learn through this episode to speak with more confidence.
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Okay, back to the episode.
So what exactly is public speaking anxiety?
It's that feeling that you always get when you know you have to speak in front of others.
Maybe your heart starts to beat faster, so your heart rate increases very fast like that.
Your hands might start to feel sweaty, so your skin gets wet, right?
Or perhaps your voice starts to shake, your voice starts to get less confident and you might even begin to feel nervous or afraid.
And this is a very normal human reaction.
Many famous speakers so famous public speakers, celebrities and even actors feel it, even after years of practice.
So it seems that anyone can experience this.
It doesn't matter what your job is, where you're from.
It seems that we all, to some level, experience public speaking anxiety.
The anxiety often can come from worrying about what the audience will think.
Will I make a mistake?
Will they understand me?
Will they judge or criticize my English, for example?
These thoughts are common, but they can make you feel more nervous, therefore more anxious, and then cause things to be even more difficult for you.
Our goal today is to give you tools and tips to manage this feeling and to speak clearly even when you're a little bit nervous.
So why do we feel this public speaking anxiety?
There are a few potential reasons.
Like I mentioned, one big reason is the fear of making a mistake, especially if you're speaking in a different language.
I've talked about this before, but often people worry about their pronunciation, their grammar, or even forgetting a word, having gaps and pauses.
And this is perfectly understandable.
Of course, you're used to speaking in your native language, and when you have to speak in a foreign or a additional language, a second language, Things are new for you and you have the extra stress of having to translate in your head, use the correct grammar, use the correct words, all things that you wouldn't have to do speaking in your native language.
So to me, it makes total sense that you might feel this way.
Another potential reason for feeling public speaking anxiety is the fear of being judged.
You might imagine that the audience is waiting for you to make a mistake or to laugh at you or to criticize you, but actually most audiences want you to succeed.
They are usually there to listen, to learn, and not to criticize.
Understanding this can really help with some of the anxiety.
Picture when you watch someone speak, when you listen or watch me speak even on this podcast.
You don't want me to be nervous or anxious or to make a mistake.
Of course you want it to be useful, to learn and to enjoy.
Audiences tend to want things to go well.
They would like things to be great.
They don't want you to make a mistake and they won't want to judge you either.
It's okay to feel nervous, but remember that you can do it.
You are capable and your message is important.
The best way to build confidence and reduce anxiety is through good preparation.
So here's a few tips for you.
Number one is practice, practice, practice.
The more you practice what you want to say, the more comfortable you will feel.
When I first started doing this podcast, I used to make a lot more mistakes.
I would pause.
I would have to read more from my notes.
I would get almost a little bit nervous recording the episodes and my voice was not as strong.
But the more I practice, the more episodes I've made, the more confident I have become with producing and creating this podcast.
And the same goes for public speaking, for giving speeches, for talking to groups of people.
Practice will make you better at it.
It won't make all those feelings of nervousness and anxiety disappear, but it will help and it will make you better at what you do and therefore you will feel more confident.
Another tip I would give is to control your breathing.
Make sure that you're breathing at the right time, that you're using deep breathing as well, and pausing between your sentences, not talking too fast and allowing yourself time to breathe.
This is also something i struggled with when we're beginning to record podcasts.
I would talk and talk and talk and then not allow myself to breathe.
Whereas now I make sure that I pause, I take breaks, and I breathe between what I want to say.
The next point I would say is to make sure that you're talking to yourself positively.
Don't be saying to yourself, I'm terrible at speaking.
This is going to be bad.
I'm going to make mistakes.
That is setting yourself up for failure.
It's giving yourself a bad start.
You want to be positive.
You want to say that you can do it because you can.
You have the ability to speak, you have the words, so you can do it.
Anyone can.
So what about in english?
What are some phrases that you can use for confident speech?
If you're delivering a speech, for example, to an audience in a classroom um, maybe in work, What phrases can you use that are strong and confident?
So we're going to look at a couple of phrases that can help you, maybe when you feel nervous, to open, strong and structure your speech.
So when starting a speech, you can open with simple, strong phrases like good morning or good afternoon, good evening everyone.
It's an absolutely fine way to open like, for example, good afternoon everyone.
I am blah, blah blah and i'm going to talk today about this.
Okay, it may be a little bit boring, but it's still a strong start that you can always rely on.
You can thank the audience for coming today and for listening to you, whoever it is.
And then with structuring, some phrases we can use to continue our speech.
To begin, you can say, first, I want to talk about...
And then what you're going to talk about.
If you want to continue to another point, you could say next we're going to look at, And then the point.
And at the end, you can say, finally, I would like to mention...
So those are just a few example phrases of how you can break up and structure your speech.
It's important to structure your speech in advance.
It will help you to feel confident about what stage you're at, how long you have to go and really what's happening.
It means you won't be relying on chance, on just making it up as you go along, and it will help you feel less nervous.
If you have an issue and you feel like you need a pause, you need just a moment to think about what you're saying.
You can simply say just a moment please, or let me think for a second if you're trying to think of words, for example, Or you can do even better and just pause.
It's okay to use silence.
In fact, silence can be very powerful.
And I have a bonus episode about the use of silence and pauses in English. on the Patreon.
It was from a couple of months ago, but it's on there in the bonus episodes.
So using some of those phrases can help give you a framework and you don't have to use them.
You can create any that you want, but learning at least that framework can give you confidence.
So usually at this point we have our listener spotlight.
So I asked in the last episode that I wanted people to write in about what they find the hardest in English.
So what part of learning English is the hardest and why?
So we haven't had so many responses this week to that question.
So I want to ask it again.
Comment on this video, maybe if you didn't, or podcast episode, if you didn't hear the last one.
What is the hardest part about learning English for you and why?
But I'm going to read out one response that we had so far, which was a good answer.
And that is, I think the name here is Nitti.
Hopefully I can say that right.
And they have said, hello, teacher.
I hope you're doing well.
I am.
Thank you very much.
I have been learning english for around five years and two, two things are the hardest parts, i guess, for for him.
Uh, one is speaking fluently without stagnation, so i, i guess you mean without stopping yeah, without pausing, And the other one is that I have got stuck at B2 level.
If you have any tips, I would really appreciate your feedback.
So there's kind of two points there that I can talk about.
The first is about pausing when you're speaking.
So of course people want to speak fluently.
They want to speak without pauses and without issues.
But don't worry if you pause.
Pausing is actually a good part of speech.
You don't want to speak and speak and speak all the time.
And my main advice with this is to slow it down.
Often these pauses happen when our brain is trying to move ahead of what we are talking about and when we're thinking too hard about what we want to say, and it can cause a little bit more stress and pausing than if we were relaxed and just talking normally.
But my advice is, if you can't think of a word in the moment, that's okay.
You should then try to explain what you're saying with the words that you remember and you know, Even if you're saying it in a really simple way, that's fine.
And with time, you will become more fluent.
The less you stress, the more you use words and remember them.
Being fluent doesn't mean you won't pause.
So don't worry.
Being fluent means you can effectively communicate. even with simpler words and replacement words.
The next question and point was about being stuck on P2 level.
I can relate to this because that area and I see it even with myself, with Russian and with English students they get stuck around that intermediate level, or at least they think they're stuck.
Because the gap between B2 and C1, it seems like almost like you're not improving, right?
And the truth is, when we go from A1 to B1, The difference seems huge because we've just started to learn the language.
Everything we're learning is new.
We're making visible, measurable improvements, and it seems great.
But once we hit intermediate level, it's harder to notice the improvements.
It's very small changes over time.
So my main advice is you might feel like you're not improving, but you probably are.
And if you're stagnating, so if you're staying at the same level, maybe you should ask yourself Why.
Am I challenging myself enough?
Am I listening to and reading content that is hard enough.
That is going to take me to the next level.
Am I pushing myself?
It's great to maintain your level, so to keep doing the things that you're doing, but you should also make sure that you're constantly pushing yourself to that target level.
So by listening and reading and trying to consume C1 content, for example.
So thank you very much for writing in and I hope that answers your questions a little bit.
So let's get back to our conclusion here.
So today we have looked at public speaking anxiety and how to gain more confidence.
Remember that feeling nervous is completely normal.
And the best ways for you to overcome it are through good preparation, knowing your topic, practicing some breathing controls and talking positively to yourself.
Thank you so much for joining me today on Easy English.
Make sure you check out the Patreon if you want to become a member and support this podcast.
And if you're new and you've enjoyed the podcast, Think about subscribing or following and sticking around.
I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
Have an amazing rest of your day.
Goodbye.
