Build English Confidence: Overcome Self-Doubt | Rule 4/7
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Adept English Rule 4. Hi there and welcome to Rule 4. You've already listened to Rules 1, 2 and 3, so remember you might like to watch the video first time through, but when you do your repeat listening while doing other things, you might want to just listen to the audio. So to recap...

Rule one said, listening and understanding what you hear is the most important task of learning. Rule two said, practice by repetition helps your English become automatic. This is the only way to fluency. And rule three gave you a technique to make sure you keep listening. Do your English learning while you're doing other things.

That way, you're more likely to continue learning English little by little, day by day, week by week. That's how improvements are made. So today we come to rule four. What is it that's difficult about language learning? What are the other reasons why people get stuck or stop? Well, sometimes it's difficult to make that jump between understanding and speaking and the jump from the classroom to online.

understanding real native English speakers and speaking in real life conversation. That's a hard jump to make. And sometimes we feel silly because it's not easy. We feel embarrassed, perhaps, and disappointed in ourselves. Our language skills are not what we hope. So perhaps we give up and stop trying. One of the things that can make this happen or make it worse, and this is the same with any type of learning,

if we self-criticise. And if you don't know that expression, self-criticism, that's the noun, it probably works better if I show you. You probably know it. Self-criticism sounds like this. Oh, I'm just bad at languages. I'm really slow at learning. My accent is terrible and my understanding is really bad. I can't keep up in conversation. I can't follow

follow what people are saying. I can't think of the words quickly enough when I'm speaking. I'm just really awful at English. I can't do it. I'm never going to learn. That's self-criticism and talking to ourselves like this really doesn't help. Most of us speak like this to ourselves sometimes.

And for some people, it's most of the time. Self-criticism affects your confidence and it can stop you from being successful. It makes a massive difference if you can work on your self-criticism and reduce it. Being self-critical doesn't help your learning.

and it's completely unnecessary. You don't deserve it. Feeling sad and disappointed about your progress is something that happens particularly with language learning. Often we can't understand why we don't make more progress. We feel embarrassed when we speak. We say to ourselves, what will people think if I make mistakes when I speak English?

and we have trouble understanding the other person. Either they speak too quickly or they use words you haven't yet learned. So our confidence level goes down. It can mean we don't even want to try. We don't want to practice speaking even when there's an opportunity.

When we're learning a new skill, self-criticism can make progress really difficult. It puts us off. When we learn a new skill, we usually go through four stages, and the four stages of learning English might sound a bit like this. Stage one, we start off not really understanding how difficult it's going to be learning English, what a big task it is. We think to ourselves, well,

Other people can do it. Other people learn English. Why can't I? I'm going to have a go. It's almost as though we understand so little about the skill we're trying to learn, we don't know how difficult it's going to be. We don't know what the problems are. We think it might be easy to learn English. That's stage one. If you're learning a language,

it tends not to last very long. We move quickly into stage two. In stage two, we've done a little bit of learning language and we start to realise how difficult it is.

We're aware that it looks easy when other people do it, but it's not easy for us and it takes such a lot of time to make progress. We start asking, will I ever get better? At this point, learning English may seem impossible and actually it is more difficult if you're using traditional learning methods as I've described.

that don't really help you to understand and speak. Lots of people stop at this point. Their self-criticism wins and they stop learning. They just conclude, I'm no good at languages. I can't do it. Other people can learn English, but I can't. What's really sad here is that this stage two is a very normal part of learning.

Not being able to do something well is a stage we all pass through at the beginning. Anyone who can speak English well now passed through this stage where you are, where it was really difficult and felt almost impossible. We've all been there.

It's not that you're bad at English. You're just passing through a stage of learning. You're finding out how much there is to learn. And in stage two, you have to live with not being good at something, trying not to self-criticise too much. And what you find is if you carry on, eventually you move to stage three.

In stage three, here you're beginning to improve. You may not realise it at first, but it happens bit by bit, gradually. You're getting better. You're improving. It's just like learning to ride a bike or learning to swim. Progress is gradual, but definitely possible. But if you stop going to the swimming pool, your swimming won't improve. And it's just the same with language learning. You have to keep doing it.

You have to move through stage two and get to stage three, where it's more rewarding, where you can see the difference. It could be confidence took such a knock in stage two, it takes a while to recognise the improvements that you're making. But the key is to carry on, keep going till we get better.

and better, and better. And sometimes other people notice the improvement before we do. Eventually, we get to stage four. Stage four means that our confidence starts to return.

We may not be exactly where we want to be in using English, but we're definitely starting to grow confidence. Maybe understanding is really good or maybe we're starting to speak. Our efforts are paying off now. We know that we can do it and we know that the method we're using works. We

We can see the evidence of improvement. We might say to ourselves, I can understand a bit more English now. Oh, and I can say a bit more too. I'm definitely getting better. And stage four continues for a very long time. It depends what level of English you want to achieve, but it starts to be enjoyable and rewarding.

It's important to understand those four stages and we all go through them, whatever the skill is that we're learning. But stages two and three can be really hard if you do a lot of self-criticism. But no one suddenly speaks a foreign language. Everyone who speaks a foreign language has put a lot of time into it. They've given their brain opportunity to learn, not learning as fast as you would like,

It probably just means you're not giving your brain enough opportunity to learn or the right conditions for learning. Another benefit, you can work on your level of English without needing to speak. That limits the self-criticism, but you can do it in private. No one needs to hear you. It is important to practice speaking when you're ready. But wow, how

How much easier and quicker that is if you've done enough listening, if your understanding is already good. The time you have spent listening to English will mean that when you do start to speak, the words will come more automatically. All this time spent listening is an investment. It will pay off later on. So rule four says...

Limit your self-criticism. Talk to yourself positively about the progress you've already made. Give yourself enough opportunity and be aware of these four stages of learning. It's not that you can't do it. After all, you speak your own language fluently. It's just you need to keep at it. You need to continue for a while longer before you'll notice improvement. And don't worry if you can't speak English like I can.

I've been speaking English all my life. It's my own language and I'm pretty sure I can't speak your language. So that's OK. You don't need to speak English like I do, but follow the seven rules and your English will get so much better.

and it might even be enjoyable at the same time. It doesn't matter how long it takes. The seven rules is intended to be worked on over seven days. But if it takes 14 days, 21 days or three months, it doesn't matter. Take your time.

it's the sticking at it that really counts. So Adept English rule four, be kind to yourself. Give yourself a break from self-criticism and give yourself time to learn by listening in private. And remember, we all go through those same stages when learning a new skill, especially a language. Oh, and

Remember, it's okay if your understanding is much better than your speaking. That's a normal stage in learning a language. For more information on the powerful techniques that the adept English listen and learn method uses, listen to rule five. But don't forget to listen to rule four a few times first. See you in the next video for rule five.