Speaking a New Language Under Pressure

How to stop freezing when speaking a new language. Managing stress, cortisol, and real time conversation pressure.

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! We do a lot in my classes, but one of the things we do not do is work to the clock. Since the vast majority of the time I only have an hour with which to work, using every second of that hour is critical and doing timed exercises rarely seems worthwhile. That said, I highly recommend timed activities outside of class for several reasons.

Pressure

Cortisol spikes are probably the last thing on the mind of the average language learner. After all, you really don’t have time to think about how stressed you are when you’re highly stressed. Unfortunately that does not mean you are free from said cortisol spikes and those spikes will directly interfere with the language centers of your brain, essentially hindering your ability to speak fluidly.

Whether you expect it or not, there will be pressure applied when you are speaking. You are, for better or worse, on a proverbial clock that will count down until the next person, or your direct interlocuter, decides to begin speaking again. Aside from directly practicing by speaking with groups of people, there are few ways to train yourself to maintain a cool head despite the pressure.

Timing yourself is one of those ways. You play how you practice and if your practice is always laid back and chill you might just find that you are unable to access the same amount of language when you are suddenly under the watchful eyes and ears of native speakers. The scenarios are different, but the feeling is the same and you need to get habituated to that feeling.

Secondarily you can work on staving off this type of pressure by preparing for the moment. That includes playing mental chess with yourself for at least an hour every day. For a “how to” on that, check out this article:

Implementation, on the other hand is pretty easy. Grab a timer, your phone is perfect since this will also prevent you from scrolling. Set it for 5 minutes and see how many sentences you can write. Next, set it for another 5 minutes and see how many sentences you can read well and fluidly. Doing the thing is great, but you should always be pushing to do new things well.

Learning to cope with stress

As you begin working through these practices what you will notice is that your coping mechanisms aren’t very good yet. You will stutter a lot, there will be too much pen tapping, and everything you think you can do is likely not possible. Fortunately this is just your baseline. In other words, this is the worst that you will ever be.

A few of the things you will end up learning will be perfect for reducing stress while speaking English as well. That is to say, the better you get at managing your stress while formulating sentences in a second language, the better you will be in your native language and vice versa. Meaning it would behoove you to try out these same strategies with your native language as well.

Ultimately, the best thing you can do is try and get it through your head that none of it really matters that much anyway. Most of the native speakers with whom you speak will not be people you speak to often. That means you can take advantage of the fact that they will likely not remember you or your mistakes. Make them early and often.

Nothing will fix mistakes faster than making them in front of other people. Do this often enough and you will realize that people are too busy paying attention to the things they are doing incorrectly to ever remember the things you do wrong. If you do happen to run into someone who is actually invested in your success, make even more mistakes because they want to help you, even if it’s painful.

Better than yesterday

Your only competition is the person you were yesterday. Being better than some person who does not know they are in competition with you is irrelevant. If you of today knows ten more words than you of yesterday, then you are already winning. Furthermore, the way you measure your progress is what will truly help you reach your goals.

Your ability to read might improve exponentially, but if your goal is to start speaking to native speakers as fast as possible, then you should be spending far more time working on your listening comprehension. Being able to understand everything perfectly is amazing, but if you can’t form a sentence it quickly becomes a silent prison of your own creation.

Tracking your victories becomes more and more important the further you progress your abilities. Times of seeming stagnation are easily overcome when it is irrefutable that you have forward momentum on your side. Be sure to pick up one of the language learning logbooks if you haven’t to take the “think” out of the equation and leave you only with the “do”.

You can get your very own here: ​French Language Logbook​ or ​Spanish Language Logbook

Conclusion

No one wants to get a timer out for their language studies. It probably hasn’t even crossed your mind in all likelihood. But when you are in the midst of a conversation, the proper training for high pressure situations can make your active recall work for you rather than against you.

The language centers of your brain are affected by many a chemical reaction. This is one you can learn to control. It will be difficult, and more frustrating than most of your other language learning strategies, but it will also pay dividends that the rest cannot. You can do difficult things and be great. So get out and do some difficult things on the clock to become great. I am rooting for you.

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