No matter how much you study the grammar and the verb tables, something you come to actually speaking a language for the first time and…nothing comes out. And it’s not because you don’t know what to say, it’s that you’re shy, afraid of making mistakes, or both. So just what can you do? Well, you can start by reading this blog article to learn how to overcome shyness when speaking a foreign language.

What Even Is Shyness?

Shyness is actually an emotion.

For some people, it may be a personality trait, something that you experience in most situations.

But for other people, it may be an emotional response to a certain situation, such as speaking a foreign language.

What makes shyness often quite difficult to deal with is that in many western cultures, shyness is typically seen as a detrimental quality. We believe it’s going to hinder our success.

However, when we cast a wider net, we learn that in some cultures, shyness is considered a positie trait.

For example, Zimbardo, who conducted much research into shyness, found Japanese people to be naturally shyer than some other cultures. Interestingly, it’s also considered a much more positive trait in Japanese society.

So when you think about shyness and ask yourself the question “Am I shy?”, if the answer is yes (even only in the situation of speaking a foreign language), don’t dismiss that as a negative quality. It’s only a negative quality if you perceive at as such.

Why are we shy?

There’s been lots of research into what causes students to feel a lack of confidence in the language classroom.

Rather than go into all of them in this blog post, we’ll focus on 3 key points that we can work on improving:

1. Afraid of making mistakes
2. Not having people to speak with comfortably
3. Lack of knowledge of the language

Embrace Mistakes

I’ve been big on shouting from the rooftops (not literally) the power of embracing your mistakes for a few years now.

I even spoke about it at the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava a few years ago.

It all started when I was using Snapchat to practice speaking the languages I was learning.

Rather than just rehearse a script that I’d written, maybe even had checked by a native for mistakes, and then memorised, I decided to just speak. To show the language I knew that day. To show where I was at that point in the language learning process.

This led me to setting myself Mistake Goals, which I know at first sounds contradictory. I mean, goals are achievements to celebrate, right?

Exactly.

When we reposition our thinking around what a mistake is, it can become something much more positive, and something we actually want to make.

So if I want to speak, I set myself a mistake goal of 5 mistakes. As I speak, perhaps I notice mistakes here and there and can keep a mental tally.

But maybe there’s some mistakes I don’t even know I’m making. This is where recording comes in. I can watch back what I said and I might just spot even more mistakes. Brilliant!

If you’re doing this by yourself, you might not have access to the last option, so don’t worry. But here, I could then even share my recording with my tutor, language exchange partner, friend, or even just on social media.

If you don’t hit the number of your mistake goal, then repeat the process again the same day (ideally as soon as possible, while you’re focused on the task) until you do get all 5 mistakes.

And this works at every level of language learning.

Let’s say I’m practising French, a foreign language I’m relatively strong in. It might take me longer to hit that mistake goal, but that means I’ve just been speaking for a lot longer than if I hadn’t set a mistake goal and had just said “speak for a minute”, or worse, not set myself a goal at all.

And if I’m using this for a language I don’t know so well, it works too. I won’t be speaking for as long as French, but I’ll be speaking from the start of that language learning process and noticing and fixing my mistakes sooner rather than letting them become engrained in my brain.

And how does this help when you’re actually speaking with people?

By embracing your mistakes when you’re practising speaking alone with mistake goals, you can begin to feel much more comfortable with the idea of making mistakes when speaking in a foreign language with others.

If you’re speaking with people you know and trust, like a tutor or friend, you can even set a mistake goal with them for the conversation you’re having and ask them to point out your mistakes.

This helps you to feel more comfortable with being corrected because you’ve invited it, rather than wanting to switch tutors because your one corrects you too much and it’s having a reverse effect.

Speak in a Safe Space

On that note, make sure that if you are feeling shy when speaking a foreign language, rather than putting yourself in an overly uncomfortable position such as a conversation with a native speaker who’s not a teacher or friend right away, start by finding a space you feel comfortable speaking in.

It may not happen right away, but once you have some people in your language learning that you know, like and trust, you’ll be able to speak more with them, which will help to overcome that awkward “Erm” when you find yourself speaking in an unexpected situation.

There’s a lot that teachers and people you’re speaking with can do here to help overcome your speaking shyness, such as simply acknowledging you’re feeling anxious about speaking, making the space an enjoyable place to be where you can laugh off mistakes, and sharing techniques to help you deal with your speaking shyness. However, they may not know how you feel, so if possible tell them.

What’s important with finding a safe space to speak, however, is that you don’t rely solely on that safe space forever. If that happens you’ll perhaps never get to speaking that foreign language with natives you don’t know.

To avoid this, make sure you set yourself a goal of when you’d like to speak outside of your safe space.

This safe space doesn’t have to be in real life either, it can totally be online!

Listen + Read + Write

Speaking a language sans shyness isn’t just a case of “Speak! Now! Always! More! Speak!”.

Confident language use is a combination of the 4 key skills associated with around half the world’s languages (roughly the other half don’t have a written form): listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Those first three all help with your speaking in the long run (even if it doesn’t feel like it) but listening will likely help the most.

Remember that finding above that we’re likely to be more shy when we have a lack of knowledge of the language? Yep. That’s where this comes in. Keep learning beyond simply pressuring yourself to speak.

Some ideas include:

Listening to podcasts
Listening to audio courses
Listening to radio
Listening to music
Watching films
Watching TV
Watching YouTube
Watching videos on social media
Reading books
Reading newspapers online
Reading article online
Reading captions and comments on social media
Writing a sentence or two first thing in the morning or last thing at night
Writing captions and comments on social media
Writing a text with a writing prompt
Writing a poem, a song, or getting creative in other ways!

Expose yourself to the language as much as possible in your daily life (including giving it a go yourself, not just taking it in) and you’ll be well on your way to improving your knowledge of the language and therefore overcoming shyness when speaking a foreign language.