Finding your feet in your second language can be a real challenge. But I’m sure you can tell me in a split second if you feel real English communication confidence?

Your heart will race, or you’ll feel a little anxious if you’re not there yet.

Before you feel bad about yourself, I’m here to tell you, this is so common in your second language.

Maybe everyone has these feelings of imposter syndrome. That horrible sensation that you just don’t stack up well when you’re speaking.

Trust me, I felt it when I was living in Germany.

It was so hard to position my voice confidently and then some German sounds were actually quite hard to get comfortable and master so that I could feel natural when speaking.

I’m a big extrovert but in Germany I found myself becoming a little wallflower. I would try to hide away in my little attic apartment on a university campus and feel ashamed and socially awkward whenever I had to meet new people.

It was so against the grain.

I really battled with it, because I felt like I’d lost the very core of my gregarious temperament in that tough process of articulating my thoughts in my second language.

When you make a decision to improve your English speaking, I recommend being really analytic.

It takes a lot of work to improve communication and you want to make sure you’re barking up the right tree when you start a program.

What I discovered was, it was not so much my German abilities that were getting in the way of communicating confidently. Instead, it was my lack of strategies for my new environment. I needed strategies to pronounce German with more comfort, and strategies to integrate all my solid skills from my mother tongue, seamlessly into the German context.

In today’s vlog, I want to show you the options you have because once you know that you can really clarify your decisions and start moving your English speaking forward.

If you’ve watched any of my other vlogs you’ll know how much I’m here to advocate for accents. In fact, I believe There’s no such Thing as a Strong Accent. 

But that being said, I know that speaking in your second language can make it really hard to move fluently and efficiently through all the new sounds. So for some of my clients focusing on the sound-based work will be the key to boost their communication confidence.

But then there are also clients that sound clear but just can’t put their finger on what’s missing in their English speaking. 

Here we are facing the need for strategies outside of pronunciation.

If English is your second language your communication comfort and confidence doesn’t just come down to how well you pronounce. It’s not all about your accent! So what can you do to leverage your message and add a competitive advantage to your social interactions at work?

A lot.

There’s an unending amount of strategies you can add to your communication and the best approach for this comes under our High – Performance Communication Services (elocution). This service is applicable to anyone who feels held back with their speaking and we have so many native English speakers getting real value from this program.

So sit back, enjoy the vlog below and as always if you have any questions, you just let me know, deal?

If you’re feeling stuck with your communication, click record and tell me about it. I’ll send you a personal reply to give you some tips, strategies & guidance.

Both video & transcript will be published at 8pm AEST on the 26th of July, so if you get to this page earlier than then, don’t forget to turn on the YouTube Premiere reminder button.

In fact, if you’re planning to improve your English speaking skills it’s vital to think about whether your goals are purely around pronunciation or mostly about how you prepare and deliver your message. 

As I always say, communication is like string theory, it’s the foundation of everything, so if you’re not sure which direction your communication needs to head in to improve, it’s really worthwhile getting a proper science-based assessment by our team to really understand your needs and to identify powerful and relevant goals. 

Thank you so much for watching!

Make sure you subscribe, give this video a thumbs up (that’s your way of smiling at me) and be sure to keep up to date with daily communication tips over on our Instagram and Facebook pages. 

Take care of yourself, be kind to yourself and don’t forget to freely express yourself.

See you soon at Voice Science!

Ciao for now,

XO

There’s no such thing as a strong accent – Voice Science™

Accents in the Workplace- Voice Science™

Read one of our blogs on the impact of accents in the workplace.

The Impact of Foreign Accent on social interaction and cognitive processes

This year-long project was coordinated by the Universiteit Gent, Belgium and funded by the European Union with the goal of generating solutions “to reduce … social bias” of accent.

We trust people with accents less… unless they speak with confidence.

Monica Torres looks into believability & accent further in this article. A great read on negative and positive bias and accent.

Why do people discriminate against speakers with foreign accents?

Did you know that infants already prefer a native accent to a non-native accent, as early as 5 months old? Accent bias starts surprisingly young. Richard Grey opens the discussion about how our brains have to work harder when we listen to an accent different than ou