Do you know how to speak English Fluently and Confidently?

Do you find yourself getting stuck while speaking?

One second you knew everything, and next second you can’t think of a single word.

Filler words such Ah, um, you know etc. are making up your content.

Otherwise, there is long silence - making you uncomfortable, nervous and gasping to fill the silence.

In this situation, you are likely to do one of the 2 things. Either you will:

1. Start speaking non-stop about the first idea that comes to your mind. It may not be related to the conversation but you still keep on speaking nonetheless.
2. Or you give up. You accept you can’t think of anything more. You apologize to your audience and silently take back your seat.

In my opinion, when you find yourself stuck with above 2 choices - always go with the second one.

Your mind will often trick you into believing that Option 1 is better - it will make you come out as smarter. After-all, you didn’t “lose” to the silence - you found something to speak which wasn’t filler. You made things on spot - this makes you intelligent.

In reality, it makes you look Dumb.

Why? Because your audience doesn’t care what you have to say unless it’s something they want to hear about.

This old quote summarises it best:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt - Abraham Lincoln

But what can you do keep on speaking about the topic when you find yourself stuck?

Simple answer - Not much.

Once you find that you are stuck in the middle of a conversation - the best way out is make a graceful exit. This means you do 1 of the following 3 things:

• Option 2 from above - simply apologise - and end it there [Not cool, but necessary if you can’t think of anything else]
• Summarise the points that you covered till now and add a conclusion [This is best, but requires diligent practice to pull it off]
• Summarise, conclude and open the floor for question and answers [This is ideal but only in limited situations. Many times you don’t have opportunity to allow Q&A]

But you can prepare yourself to prevent from getting stuck while in the First place. Here is how:

Here, I am believing that your fundamentals around vocabulary and grammar are fine. If not you need to work on them first. Check my previous articles on vocabulary and grammar building in your email.

You getting stuck while speaking in English will most likely happen due to following two reasons:

• You don’t spend enough time playing with English language in your original thoughts.
• You didn’t spend enough time preparing for this specific occasion.

Either way the answer goes back to not spending enough time and preparing.

Like I have said about a few thousand times, “Preparation is the key in Public Speaking”

But preparation doesn’t mean that you memorise every line and paragraph in advance.

While in some situations that is desirable, you always want to have the capacity to put facts, and logic into your own words - based on situation, your audience and what you have said before.

And that capacity is developed by regularly “playing” or “engaging” with English language.

While there are many tips I can give you, in this newsletter I want to share my favorite and the one which is easiest to implement and gives the best results.

And it is to…

Maintain a Diary (or Journal) in English

If your first reaction is that this idea is too simplistic to work - you haven’t given it an honest attempt.

The reasons why keeping a diary works are simple:

1. You play or practice with English language on daily basis.
2. You use original thoughts which builds your confidence in trying new sentences and phrases.
3. You gain confidence in expressing your own independent thoughts and opinions.
4. When you write especially with pen and paper it makes it easy for you to remember details.

Once you start maintaining a diary in English everyday, you will see rapid transformation in your confidence to speak in English.

Your self-doubt or fear of criticism from others will decrease. Very often we get so worried what others will think of us while speaking we lose focus from our content and delivery. And once that rhythm while speaking is broken, it is difficult to gain back especially with many eyes directly looking into you.

Once again, don’t reject this suggestion because it is too simple. Write in a diary using English - it really works. Like I have said thousands of times before - “Writing is a super-power”.