Are you getting to the root of the problem?

I the main complaint I hear from clients whether they’re coaching clients or language students is not having enough vocab.

This lack can be categorised into 3 different types:

• Forgetting vocab when speaking with peers
• Not having enough vocab to express yourself precisely
• Judging your vocab as less than that of your peers

In each case what tends to happen is that this lack pushes people to either search for more vocab or avoid all situations where they might have to speak up in front of their peers, particularly those they either hold in high esteem such as a respected scientist, or have some power/influence over them such as a team lead/boss. Unfortunately studying vocab and avoiding situations where you might have to speak English aren’t the solution to the problem. The reason being that this lack of vocabulary is just the symptom of the ‘problem’ and not the root cause of it.

The problem with treating the symptom as a cause is that like cutting down weeds, all looks good on the surface with the weed gone from sight, but the roots are still very much there and the weed soon grows back, sometimes even more strongly. What this looks like in practice is when you spend weeks in a language class learning new vocab and phrases, or hours looking up words and googling phrases before your presentation only to step into the meeting room and find that all your freshly learnt vocabulary has gone.

The three types of ‘vocabulary lack’

Forgetting vocab when speaking to peers

This is the complaint I hear most often and it’s easy to understand the natural impulse to spend more time revising vocabulary. After all if you forget something, then spending more time working with it will surly mean it’s fresher in your mind when you come to need it.

Yes… and no. Yes, if you don’t speak English very often it can be more difficult bringing words that you learnt years previously can be difficult. However, if you have intermediate English and you’re regularly exposed to English, that should be enough to allow youth speak up in most situations. If you’re notice you’re forgetting vocab in high pressure situations such as meetings with your peers, studying more and more phrases probably isn’t going to help.

Losing vocab is the symptom of underlying anxiety typically over judgement. When we’re anxious, we go into survival mode, and the brain is focussing more on getting out of the situation than remembering English vocabulary.

Interestingly enough it’s often not the complicated vocab that suddenly goes missing but simple words that were learnt years ago. This just makes the situation worse, because the we then beat ourselves up for hours or even days afterwards over the embarrassment at forgetting such a simple word. We don’t mind forgetting difficult words quite as much, because it doesn’t make us feel quite as stupid.

Not having enough vocab to express yourself precisely

The people who have this complaint have a strong perfectionist side to their personality. They don’t like to be misunderstood and like to have the perfect words and phrases to put across their exact meaning. They pride themselves on their attention to detail, like to understand exactly what’s going on in a conversation as well as subtle nuances and the differences that those bring to a topic.

They put a lot of pressure on themselves to be the best, meaning they’re aiming high… and not there yet. They (secretly) feel that by not having the exact vocabulary to represent their thoughts they will be judged as lacking in themselves somehow, which would constitute as a failure and threaten their identity. The combination of vulnerability and identifying so closely with the problem causes the discomfort particularly when speaking to their peers.

Judging your vocab as less than that of your peers

If this is you, once again you’re identifying too closely with the situation. When your sense of worth in comparison with your peers is judged in part by your language ability and the number of ‘fancy words’ you can remember you’re setting yourself up for problems.

The truth is that we all have a basic vocabulary which is made up of very similar words, such as tree, building, car, train etc. This of course will extend to more complex vocabulary depending on your culture, society and industry. In addition to this basic and extended vocab we each have a smaller range of sophisticated words that we’ve learnt from the unique situations we’ve found ourselves in over time. These could be words like ambivalent, superfluous, deviation, fiasco or even turnpike. They could be completely obscure words you heard once and for whatever reason -perhaps just because you like the sound of it- they stick in your memory.

It’s a completely natural system and to be honest, this additional layer of sophistication is actually unnecessary (or superfluous) in normal conversation, apart from making us feel special when we’re able to use it in conversation. The problem with this comes when we listen to others and notice all the fancy words they know which we don’t. I say ‘problem’ here because when we notice these words we believe that we’re less because we don’t know them. We’re not only equating our worth and value with a selection of sometimes obscure words, we’re also completely overlooking the fact that we have our own set of fancy words that the other person doesn’t know. Subconsciously we believe that the other person knows all of our vocab as well as these additional words.

So what’s the solution?

If you resonate with one or all of these situations here’s my advice to you.

??Stop equating your value and worth in each of these situations with your vocabulary and proficiency in a second or even third or forth language.

??Stop treating the symptom as the cause and dig deep to find out what’s really going on below the surface.

??Be gentle to yourself in the process. Rather than ripping out roots and risk causing more damage dig gently around the source of the problem. Have compassion with yourself and go about discovering more about your belief system and your connection between the shelf and worth.

Stuck with how to start?

I have a short video course which is one route to identifying the origins of your fears and I’m in the process of putting together a work book with steps to take to gain confidence speaking up as an introvert in an extroverted world.

If you need help book in my diary for a free 20 minute discovery call to discuss how I can support you start speaking up with confidence.