What is confidence? What does a confident English speaker look like? And how can you become a confident speaker?
This episode is going to try and answer some of these important questions. You might assume that someone with perfect grammar, a huge vocabulary, and a native-like accent will be a confident speaker. But that is not necessarily the case.
Over the years, I’ve met English learners with excellent English, but who were afraid to speak. And learners with much weaker English ability, but who seemed completely confident and comfortable communicating. This suggests that [00:01:00] confidence and language ability are not exactly the same thing.
So I want to explore confidence from a slightly more psychological perspective. What is confidence? What is the opposite of confidence? Why is confidence so important for language learners? How about self-efficacy? And how can you become a more confident English speaker?
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Vocabulary
- confidence (n): A belief in your ability to do something successfully or deal with challenges effectively.
- Even though she felt nervous before the interview, her confidence helped her answer the questions clearly.
- self-doubt (n): A lack of confidence in your own abilities, decisions, or skills.
- His self-doubt stopped him from speaking English, even though he knew the correct answers.
- self-efficacy (n): A person’s belief that they can successfully complete a specific task or achieve a particular goal.
- After several successful conversations in English, her self-efficacy as a speaker increased significantly.
- handle a situation (phr): To deal with a problem, challenge, or difficult circumstance successfully.
- I don’t know exactly what questions they will ask, but I trust myself to handle the situation.
- sophisticated (adj): More advanced, complex, or developed than something simpler.
- As his English improved, he developed a more sophisticated understanding of grammar and vocabulary.
- cope (v): To deal successfully with a difficult situation or challenge.
- Learning a new language can be stressful, but most learners eventually learn how to cope with the difficulties.
- uncertainty (n): The state of not knowing exactly what will happen in the future.
- Moving to a new country involves a lot of uncertainty, but it can also be exciting.
What Confidence Really Means
According to the Cambridge Dictionary,
[00:04:00] the definition of confident is “being certain of your abilities or having trust in people, plans, or the future.”
I think this might be a little bit different to what many of you listening assume confidence means, especially what confidence means in practice.
Many people think confidence means being fearless. You see a confident person as someone who doesn’t feel nervous or doesn’t really make mistakes. But being certain of your abilities and trusting your skills is not the same thing as being perfect and fearless.
Confidence is sometimes understood as a belief in your ability to handle a situation successfully.
That definition doesn’t say anything about “being perfect.” Instead, it means that [00:05:00] you trust yourself to deal with challenges when they appear.
For example, think about a professional footballer. The World Cup is on right now, so think about a professional footballer in the World Cup playing for one of the world’s top teams.
They are almost certainly a confident footballer because it is difficult, maybe impossible, to get to the top level, to be playing for your country, without trusting in your ability.
But even if they are confident, I’m sure they still make mistakes, like giving the ball away or getting a red card. And I’m sure they still get nervous before games.
The same idea applies to language learning, English learning. We’ll talk about this more later in the episode, but I think a confident English speaker is someone who trusts their ability to communicate even when things don’t go perfectly.
Having a great knowledge of grammar and [00:06:00] vocabulary doesn’t necessarily mean you will be confident.
Uncertainty and Trust
Confidence is connected to the idea of uncertainty. Uncertainty means not knowing what will happen. It’s the opposite of certain. Uncertainty.
When you start a new job, or you travel to a new country, or you do something different from your regular schedule, you will be surrounded by uncertainty. You cannot predict every challenge you will face.
Confidence is what allows you, allows us all, to carry on despite uncertainty. Confidence is the trust that you will be able to cope if anything goes wrong.
This idea is important because a lot of people misunderstand confidence. They think confidence means that you believe nothing [00:07:00] will go wrong, nothing bad will happen. But actually, I think it’s a bit different.
If you’re confident, you believe that if something bad happens, you can manage it. You have the skills, you have the ability, you have the knowledge, you have the experience, you have… You trust yourself to deal with difficult situations.
So confidence is not the same as ability. Ability is your actual skill level. Confidence is your belief in your ability.
Self-Doubt and Avoidance
It might be easier to understand confidence by considering it in the negative. What is the opposite of confidence?
You might have answered low ability or lack of skill. But as I said, confidence and ability are not the same thing.
Think about someone who has studied English for 10 years, maybe some of you listening.
You have a large vocabulary. You [00:08:00] understand complex grammar. You read difficult articles. You listen to Thinking in English episodes. But maybe you avoid speaking whenever possible because you are afraid of making mistakes. Clearly, you have a lot of ability. Your problem is a lack of confidence.
I think the opposite of confidence is self-doubt. Self-doubt is uncertainty about your own abilities. It is the feeling that you’re not good enough, you’re not intelligent enough, you’re not skilled enough to handle a situation. You doubt yourself.
Everyone experiences self-doubt. I think it’s a normal part of being human and probably a useful part of being human. But self-doubt can become so strong that it stops us using our skills and our abilities.
Think about if you were to go out into the streets of London and try and have a [00:09:00] conversation with someone. Do you think that you could successfully have a conversation in English with a random stranger? Or do you think you can’t do that?
If you lack confidence, you probably answered negatively. You probably said, “Oh, I could not have a conversation,” when I’m almost sure all of you can have a conversation in English because you’re listening to this podcast.
A language learner, like you learning English or like myself learning Japanese, who suffers with self-doubt, could choose the safest option. And the safest option is to avoid speaking.
If you don’t speak, you can’t embarrass yourself. If you don’t speak, nothing can go wrong.
Psychologists sometimes call this “avoidance behavior“. Avoidance behavior is when people stay away from situations that make them uncomfortable or anxious. You avoid the things that make you anxious.
This is okay for [00:10:00] you because it makes you feel relieved. You don’t need to do something out of your comfort zone. You don’t need to be embarrassed or feel anxious or feel uncomfortable.
But you do lose an opportunity. You lose an opportunity to get some more experience.
Confident people still feel nervous, of course. A confident public speaker still feels anxious before giving a presentation. A confident athlete still feels pressure before running in the Olympic 100-meter race.
All of those athletes in the World Cup final are confident in their ability, but they’re probably nervous.
And a confident language learner still feels nervous before speaking with a native speaker. I do. I feel nervous whenever I have to use Japanese. The difference, I guess though, is that confident people don’t allow the fear to stop them.
Humans are constantly in situations where we don’t [00:11:00] have complete information. Every day, we make decisions without knowing exactly what will happen. Where the outcome is not a hundred percent certain.
From an evolutionary perspective, this is why confidence has been so valuable. The word evolutionary refers to the long process through which species change and adapt over many generations.
Human beings evolved in environments that were unpredictable, so our ancestors faced uncertainty all the time. Where would they get their food? Could they find a cave to sleep in today? Was it going to rain? Was it going to be sunny? Was it going to snow?
As a result, humans have developed mechanisms, psychological tools, that help us function in uncertain situations. And confidence is a great example of a [00:12:00] psychological mechanism that helps us deal with uncertain situations.
Of course, confidence can sometimes be excessive. Someone who believes they cannot fail might take unnecessary risks.
So that’s why we need to distinguish between “confidence” and “overconfidence.” Overconfidence is when someone’s belief in their ability is higher than their actual ability. You have too much confidence in yourself.
A Confident English Speaker
I have spoken to hundreds, maybe even thousands, of English learners over the past decade. I worked with children in schools. I taught online English classes to adults for a few years. I’ve been running the Thinking in English Conversation Club since 2022.
And to be honest, it’s clear when someone is confident.
I think sometimes people mistake a [00:13:00] confident English speaker for someone who is highly proficient. Proficient means skilled or capable at doing something.
These things are definitely related. Proficiency and confidence are related, but they’re not the same thing. Improving your English can increase your confidence, but confidence is not necessarily the result of improving your English. You can be confident without being a high-level speaker.
I like to think about myself here. I speak Japanese to a decent level, my listening is pretty good, and I use Japanese every day in my life.
But I’m not that technically skilled. I haven’t passed the highest level of the Japanese proficiency test. I often make grammar mistakes or vocabulary errors. I’m not particularly good at reading. I’m trying to improve my overall level.
But one thing that is true is I’m a pretty confident speaker. I will speak to people often. [00:14:00] I’ll speak to anyone, and I’ll speak in various different situations and about various different matters.
I’m not the best speaker. Like I said, I make a lot of mistakes, but because I’m quite confident, I can communicate my point. Not as efficiently, but I can do it effectively.
I have friends who are much better technically at Japanese than I am. They can read more, understand more, they know more grammar. They are perfectly comfortable with business Japanese or academic Japanese when they’re reading or when they’re writing or when they’re listening, but they’re not confident speakers.
They do things like apologizing for their language level or hesitating before every sentence. When I speak, I try to speak freely. I like to get involved in conversations. I like to ask questions. I’m quite comfortable communicating. I make a lot of mistakes, but I don’t let that interrupt my [00:15:00] conversations.
My less confident, technically better at Japanese friends sometimes speak a bit less freely.
So confidence is often visible through your behavior rather than your language ability. Confidence is about how you act, and especially how you act when you do not know something or you make a mistake.
A confident English speaker finds a way to express their ideas when they don’t know the correct word. A less confident speaker might freeze or stop speaking when in the same situation.
One characteristic of a confident English speaker is that they prioritize communication over perfection. So prioritize means to treat something as more important than something else.
If your goal is to be perfect, it’s going to make it harder for you to communicate.
Imagine you’re trying to tell someone about a trip you went [00:16:00] on this weekend. If you are perfection-focused in your language learning you might spend a few seconds worrying about grammar before you’re speaking, and then you repeatedly hesitate when you’re unsure of a word. But someone who just cares about communicating might just simply tell the story without really caring about any mistakes, and they’re likely to be a bit more fluent.
Why Confidence Matters
I believe that confidence is one of the most important factors in successful language learning. Confidence influences your behavior, and your behavior influences your progress.
Let’s think about two hypothetical English learners. Both learners have the exact same level of English. They know the same vocabulary and the same grammar. They have achieved similar scores on English tests. But one learner is confident and the other is not.
The confident learner [00:17:00] volunteers during lessons, and they like to start conversations with random people in English. If they don’t know something, they like to ask questions. They participate in the Thinking in English conversation clubs on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Or they go online and leave comments on YouTube videos or blog articles. They write social media posts in English. They use English all the time.
The unconfident learner avoids speaking whenever possible. They hesitate before answering questions. They worry about making mistakes. They wait to use English until they feel ready.
Which learner is likely to improve more over the long term?
It’s almost certainly the confident learner because they gave themselves so many more opportunities to use English. Languages are a skill, and skills develop through practice.
Eventually, you need to [00:18:00] speak, to learn how to speak.
Confidence gives you more chances. It’s a kind of positive feedback loop. A feedback loop is where the outcome influences the thing it created.
That’s a bit confusing, but… confidence leads to speaking, speaking leads to experience, experience leads to improvement, improvement leads to more confidence, and the cycle repeats.
There’s also a negative version of this loop.
A learner lacks confidence. Because they lack confidence, they avoid speaking. Because they avoid speaking, they gain less experience. Because they gain less experience, their progress is slow. And because their progress is slow, they become even less confident. Again, the cycle repeats.
So many people are scared to speak in English, right? But if you join something like my conversation club, [00:19:00] or if you don’t want to join mine, there’s many other conversation clubs online. There are apps like HelloTalk or language learning sites like italki or something, where you can go and you can have conversations in English.
Finding a safe space, a place with other learners, a place with people who are in the same situation as you, I think is important because it’s safe. It gives you a safe place to speak in English, and that will increase your confidence. And then when your confidence is high enough, you can go out in the real world.
Sometimes people tell me they want to wait until their grammar or vocabulary is better, and then they’re going to start speaking. But there is always more grammar to learn, always more vocabulary to learn.
When I started learning Japanese, I was speaking in Japanese to Japanese people within the first week of studying the language. Now, I was lucky because I lived in [00:20:00] Japan at the time. I started learning Japanese on the day I moved to Japan, basically. And I improved really quickly.
You probably won’t have that situation where you move to a new country and start learning their language, but you can apply that principle, right? Speak now. You don’t have to wait until you’re better. Start speaking.
Dunning-Kruger Dip
Confidence and ability seem like they should go in the same direction, but it’s not always the case. Sometimes we might see English improving, but confidence stagnating or decreasing. It sounds strange, but it is common. Some advanced learners are less confident than when they were beginners.
I’ve experienced this. I probably felt less embarrassed, less anxious about using my Japanese eight years ago when I was a beginner
The reason is… when I started to learn Japanese, [00:21:00] my understanding of the language was so limited. I didn’t know grammar or vocabulary or idioms, pronunciation.
I didn’t know accents, cultural references, Japanese communication styles. I didn’t know any of that stuff. I was unaware of how much there was to learn because my knowledge was so limited. And that meant I felt quite confident, surprisingly confident.
I knew enough to order food. I knew enough to introduce myself well. I could have simple conversations. I did not see the complexity of the language, so I assumed I was doing well. “Look at me, I’m having conversations.”
But as my Japanese improved, I began noticing things. I began noticing that my ability was not as good as I thought. I realized there were multiple ways to express the same idea in Japanese. I noticed that there are 10 similar [00:22:00] words which mean the same thing. I noticed I was making mistakes.
Quite often, I speak, and I know my grammar is wrong, but I don’t know how to fix it, and it gets frustrating. This increased awareness, the awareness that you are not as good as you think you are, makes you feel less confident.
This is related to the, oh, the Dunning-Kruger effect. You might have seen it on the internet. It’s quite a popular thing. It’s a graph that shows levels of ability and confidence.
You can find lots of information about the Dunning-Kruger Effect out there, so I won’t explain it here. But one of the things you notice when you look at the graph is that experts, the people with the most knowledge about something, tend to maybe not be as confident as people with less knowledge. Often people with limited knowledge of something can be more confident.
How Can You Become More Confident?
So how can you become more confident?
[00:23:00] Personality plays a role in this. Some people are naturally more outgoing, naturally more comfortable taking risks than other people. But a lot of confidence is learned.
One of the most influential psychologists to study this topic was Albert Bandura. Bandura introduced the concept of self-efficacy, or the theory of self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is very similar to confidence, but it’s slightly different. It refers to a person’s belief in their ability to perform a specific task or achieve a particular goal. Confidence is your overall feeling. You’re confident. Self-efficacy is your specific belief in your ability for a specific task.
For example, someone may have high self-efficacy when driving a car, very confident in their driving ability, but they have low self-efficacy [00:24:00] when speaking in public. They’re not confident while speaking.
What makes Bandura’s work relevant, especially for this episode right now, is his explanation of how self-efficacy develops.
He argued that the most powerful source of confidence is “successful experiences.” Confidence grows when we repeatedly prove to ourselves that we can do something.
I strongly believe in this concept. If you start speaking in English now, you will become more confident over time.
Bandura described four different sources of self-efficacy, four ways you can build your self-efficacy.
First is “mastery experiences”. Basically, successfully doing the task, repeatedly doing it successfully. That builds your confidence.
Second is vicarious experiences. This means seeing people in similar situations being successful or [00:25:00] successfully doing something. That also improves your confidence.
Third is social persuasion, so being given positive and credible feedback, like when someone says your English is good and they really mean it.
And finally is your emotional and physiological state. If you can reduce your stress, reduce your anxiety, have a good night’s sleep so you feel less tired, you’ll become more confident.
Build Speaking Confidence
If we apply these steps to being a confident English speaker.
First, speak English repeatedly. The more times you speak, the more times you’re successful. That means the more self-efficacy you will have in English speaking, the more confidence.
You could join my conversation clubs, go to a language exchange meeting, find a speaking partner. Once you start speaking, you will notice improvements.
Second, see other people like yourself being successful, speaking in English. Maybe watch some YouTube [00:26:00] videos or TikTok videos of people from your country speaking in English.
Third, find an English teacher or someone to give positive feedback when you do well. It could be your friend or a teacher.
So overall, if you want to be a more confident English speaker, you need to start speaking regularly.
Final Thought
After everything we’ve discussed today, I don’t think confidence means being perfect or having perfect grammar or having a native-like accent. Confidence is trusting your ability to communicate. It’s believing that you can handle mistakes and difficult situations.
Many learners tell themselves they are going to start speaking English when they feel more confident, but that’s the wrong way round. Confidence comes after action, not before it. Confidence comes from speaking. The more you speak, the more [00:27:00] experience. The more experience you have, the more evidence you get that you can do it successfully. And over time, the evidence that you can communicate successfully becomes confidence.
But what do you think? Are you a confident English speaker?
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