What is essential for effective English?
” CONFIDENCE “
I built My Confident English because after ten years of teaching I saw a common problem students had.
Those who used English professionally knew a lot of English in theory, but when it came to using it in professional situations, they became anxious, hesitated and often instead of speaking, kept quiet.
In essence, they lacked the confidence to speak up in English.
What was clear was that they didn’t need to learn more English, they needed to practise and perfect the English they already knew, so that they could use it effectively in meetings, presentations and daily life.
I realised at the root of this problem were three main issues:
- The lack of a reliable system for identifying, learning and retaining essential advanced, natural vocabulary for each individual’s situation
- A gap in knowledge about how native speakers really produced English – pronunciation, connected speech and the rhythm of English being the most undertaught aspects.
- Little or no access to guided practice – students didn’t have the chance to test what they knew outside of their workplace. All their real practice was in high-stakes situations at work – no wonder they were stressed!
With this knowledge, I set about creating a system that would overcome these challenges for my students.
Check out what some of my past students have to say about the course below:
Helene talks about the MCE Course (2)
How Nicolas was helped by the course
Danilo's experience of the course
“When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.”
– Joe Namath
Have you ever seen a professional actor stuttering over their lines?
This shines through in everything they do – from speaking in public, to making decisions to writing books and publishing. And this is at the basis of how I help students of English become confident communicators.
Of course, there are the actual words and grammar structures to learn. But often, my students know a lot of content but have trouble using it in the moment when a situation calls for their contribution.
They tell me they feel nervous that they will make a mistake, that they will use the wrong word, or worse still won’t be able to remember any words at all in English. These are all common and natural worries.
In my teaching, I teach you essential vocabulary, phrases and grammar but also show you how to leverage what you already know and use it effectively and with confidence.
Using English with the confidence of a cool cat basically comes down to three things:
- Identifying the areas that you are weak in and finding out EXACTLY why you are weak in those areas. Is it lack of study; lack of practise in the real world because you are nervous; lack of motivation because until now you’ve been studying English because you’ve been told you should, not because it links to one of your real life goals.
- Creating an efficient and effective FOR YOU study plan to train yourself up to a fluid operating level in those areas. This includes discovering your real big life goal or life value that requires you to use English effectively – the big life goal or value acts as a motivator to commit to improving your English – it also helps counteract feelings of fear you may have using English. It is also great fun to find out what your big life goal is.
- Being honest with yourself and learning when you have REALLY understood and assimilated your target language. If the language is not in you, then you commit to repeating the process. After a while, you will learn the best ways for you of remembering new language and using it.
As well as those points, it is also important to make a pledge to spend time and effort studying both language and confidence techniques to ensure you build your knowledge and experiential confidence day by day. If you want to improve your English and become confident you can, but you do have to put the work in.
