why do I understand English but cannot speak it? how to solve it? (a step-by-step action plan)

hey guys this is Pearly so if you have been following my journey for a while you know that I'm back in Taiwan so I only did travel vlogs back then when I was in Paris so I really miss sit down like this and chat with you guys so anyway today I'm going to address a very interesting topic a question that I received quite often and that also interest me very much personally so the question is why do I understand English but cannot speak it like why why is that so in this video I'm going to

first share with you why does this problem happen and later in the second part I'm going to share with you my advices on how to solve this problem step by step so let's get right in yalla yalla يَلاَّ يَلاَّ so why do we understand it but cannot speak it in my opinion there are several reasons on that firstly passive skill and active skill are two very different skill sets listening and reading are passive skill while speaking and writing are active skills in contrast to passive skill active skill requires you to do something physically and especially

for speaking it requires you to have this thoughts-to-mouth coordination and there are always going to be sounds that are difficult for you to pronounce so for sure active skill is going to require more effort from you in other words when you listen people do the thinking for you but when you speak you have to do your own thinking you have to transform your thoughts into a foreign language build sentences pronounce it etc etc so that's why it requires more effort and it's going to to be more difficult than passive skill secondly our education system tends

to focus too much on passive skill it just so happened that our English education focus way too much on training our passive skill such as grammar reading memorizing vocabulary and listening too much input but two little output like speaking and writing also our education tends to teach English in a way that is similar to other academic subjects such as mathematics it focuses too much on the logic itself you know having to have the correct grammar order how to form a correct sentence and how to use the word correctly it focused so much on having to

have the correct answer it's only going to hinder us when we started to learn how how to speak because now we became so afraid of making mistakes and not to say that we have to take so many English exams at school and it only made it worse because now not only do we lack the active skill we are also very afraid of making mistakes because we feel embarrassed we feel bad whenever we receive bad score or incorrect answers and the third reason yes we are too afraid of making mistakes as we grew up we tend

to become more and more afraid of making mistakes in general not just in English because of yeah how English was taught in school and societal and peer pressure and etc etc we are just so afraid of what others might think of us or even laugh at us when we made mistakes so as a result we tend to overthink and think way too long before saying something in English because we're like oh my God what's the correct grammar order for this sentence what's the correct word or expression to use etc etc because we are simply so

afraid of making mistakes this is also one of the biggest reasons why I think we can pick up a language much faster when we were a kid because at that time we were simply not at all afraid of making mistakes fourthly lack of confidence especially on the pronunciation so why do we lack confidence when it comes to English speaking it's simply because we lack the training and the practice we need in order to speak English comfortably but the logic here is actually quite simple and straightforward the more you practice the more comfortable and better you

become in speaking English and naturally the more confident you became and because you are more confident you are more willing to speak more English so it's like a positive feedback loop like a positive cycle lastly lack of practice this is yeah one of the biggest and main reasons of why we understand English but cannot speak it because practice itself is just so so extremely important when it comes to developing your speaking skill if you don't practice often then the time you will have to wait for the words to come to your mind when you need

them is much longer because your brain just isn't used to that yet but I assure you the more you practice the easier the words will come to your mind when you need them in other words the less time you will have to wait for your thoughts to become English words especially when you start thinking in English too I believe speaking should be a very intuitive thing think about it for a moment when you speak your native tongue how your brain function in that kind of situation you don't place the order of verb and nouns for

example right? when you speak your native tongue your thoughts just automatically became words in your mother tongue and this is exactly the same when you speak English or any other foreign languages you are trying to learn okay so now let me share with you step by step on how exactly can you practice your English speaking skill so here's the thing the ultimate goal of knowing how to speak English is to be able to communicate with others right so I categorized what we could do and important mindsets to bear in mind into three different categories so

the first category is what we could do how can we practice before we talk to others then the important mindsets and things to do during our talk to others and lastly what we could do after our talk to others so let's get right in let's go yayyy so it's finally the juicy part so first of all let me first share with you what practice you can do before you talk to others in English step one do shadowing practice pick a video that you are interested in or you like you love that has English subtitles and

start doing the shadowing practice I really could not recommend shading practice more especially when it comes to developing your English speaking skill it's just such a great practice to get yourself comfortable with your own voice to train your tongue to prce practice your pronunciation and also to learn how native speaker the way they speak English the rhythm and gestures and facial expression just like everything just try to mimic them as much as possible I really don't have time to demonstrate to you how I do shadowing practice but I can do another video fully dedicated to

how I do shadowing practice just let me know if you are interested in it okay step two read your favorite things out loud pick something that you really like whether it's an article a magazine a poem a book etc etc and read them out loud often if there are some pronunciation that you are not so sure of you can always check it up on Google translation for example this step is slightly harder than the previous one as you don't necessarily have the audio of the document so instead of just listening to someone and repeat after

them you will have to do more work here you will have to actively pronounce the words yourself and the phrases yourself and to find the rhythm etc etc but with more practices the more comfortable and confident you will become with your own pronunciation and also the general way of speaking English step three label things around you out loud to yourself ah so this step is slightly more difficult than the previous two steps because now you have to actively search for words in your brain that associate with the objects but I promise you this is a

really fun and effective way to expand your vocabulary so for example this is my favorite wireless headphone um it's blue I like to use it often I wear it all the time so things like that you can try to expand your sentences it doesn't have to be just like a word like headphone you can try to make it more personal and start to create sentences that matters to you the last step step four talk to yourself yes talk to yourself if you have never done it before you might find it to be quite difficult and

quite weird at first but I promise you this is just so helpful and so effective and I would really suggest you to try to narrate your thoughts when you talk to yourself okay let me demonstrate to you for example oh my God the sun is out today it's so so sunny but I have to stay at my office and stare at the computer all the time and it's so annoying because I want to go out and enjoy the sunshine but I could not because my boss will be so mad at me if I just go

out things like that like you know you get what I mean we always have so many things going on in our brain and just try to narrate that out loud in English and the more you practice the less time you will need to have the words come to your mind when you need them and another tip I would also recommend you to try out is try to talk to yourself when you are taking a shower I don't know why it works so good at least for me like I always have much more things to talk

to myself and I also speak better when I'm in a shower I don't know maybe it's the help of the water the sounds of the water or because like I know I'm in a very secure and safe place so I feel more comfortable to talk to myself but I would really recommend you to try that out to talk to yourself when you are taking a shower okay with all the practices you did before actually having a conversation with someone in English now you are finally ready to have a English conversation congratulations yay yay there are

some important mindsets and also things to do during the conversation with someone that I would like to share with you so there are two very important mindsets in my opinion firstly wire yourself mentally every time before you talk to someone in English with this statement I'm here to make mistakes only through mistakes can I learn and improve faster so try to say something like this three times at least three times whether like silently to yourself or you know out loud to yourself every time before your talk like I'm here to make mistakes I'm here to

make mistakes I'm here to make mistakes and another very important mindset that I would love to share with you guys is that since conversation with someone is a live interaction so the flow of the conversation is much more important than let's say the number of mistakes you make in other words it's better to make tons of mistakes than let's say wait for and think for two to three minutes every time before saying something because just like what I said it's a live interaction so if you have to think so long and think so much before

any sentences or words that you spill out then this conversation is just not likely to flow well and also unless you are paying for someone to talk to you that person would also be unlikely to be willing to wait for you each time to figure out out a perfect sentence to say okay now let me share with you the things I do all the time when practicing speaking English and also all the other foreign languages with someone so first of all I always adopt this fake it till you make it kind of attitude the thing

is you don't need to be good in speaking English for someone to feel or to think that ah she already speak good English so just relaxed be at ease be confident and adopt this vibe of I totally speak English it is totally fine that in the beginning you feel really nervous and you don't want to say much it's okay to listen to other people talking most of the time and just throw in your opinion here and there and when you make mistakes own your mistakes learn to be okay with it trust me the more mistakes

you make the more and more you will become comfortable when you make mistakes you might wonder why fake it till you make it mindset this kind of attitude is important because if you are extremely nervous always afraid of opening your mouth and worrying about making mistakes this sort of emotion would also transmit to the person that you are talking to and that person will likely also started to feel kind of awkward kind of nervous and this kind of atmosphere vibe is just not going to help this conversation to flow in a good way secondly try

not to translate everything you want to say from your native tongue to English I'm so guilty of doing it myself when I practice speaking Arabic and Spanish but really like every language has its own way of functioning so it's just not going to make sense to translate them all the time and and since you already understand English then it's much better to start training your brain to think in English instead of translating them all the time well the lighting is better here so that's why anyway thirdly try your best to not switch to other languages

during your English conversation with someone no matter how hard it is going to be for you or how easy it will be for you to just switch to another language I am also very guilty of doing it myself from time to time but I find it detrimental because when you struggled to say certain words or phrases is actually a great opportunity to train your brain to come up with another way of saying it and this ability is such a useful skill to develop because it is nearly impossible to always have the exact words or phrases

fourthly try to mimic how native speakers speaks I don't know if you have ever noticed that in each language it has its own way of expressing things and emotions okay let's say for example when you are shocked you are surprised and just couldn't believe in something in Chinese in Mandarin we say 真的假的！？太誇張了吧！and in English we say what?! are you kidding me that's that's impossible and in Japan we say え〜〜〜！！！マジで！？and in French we say mais non! mais c'est pas possible! well something like that maybe it's not like the best example but I hope you get what

I mean it's actually a very very fun thing to do a fun practice to practice and it also makes you feel like a local which is I love this kind of practice lastly very important try to smile as much as possible when you talk to others and just try to be in a good mood in general and also try to engage yourself in the conversation as much as possible so why is this important because when you are in a happy mood it also affects the person whom you are talking to and the whole vibe the

whole atmosphere would therefore be good it will make you less nervous and anxious and on top of that when you engage yourself in the conversation you stop worrying about making mistakes because you're are so engaged in a conversation you are curious you want to share your thoughts and opinion so badly naturally just like you don't care you stop caring about making mistakes so after your conversation with someone there's only one thing that I would suggest you to do try to recall are there any words or phrases that you want to say so badly during the

conversation but you just have no idea how to say them and just you know in your brain you couldn't find the words if you do then look them up and note them down based on my personal experiences like words and phrases I learned from this kind of situations always perfectly stick in my head for a very long time I think the reason is that the frustrations I felt during the conversation of you know like damn I want to say this so badly but I just don't know how to say it is so strong and it

sucks so because of this kind of frustrations after I looked them up it's just sticked in my head for such a long time that I usually won't forget about them it's not just like a random phrase or word throw to you from a textbook or a teacher that you really just don't know when to use them or how exactly to use them so yes recall look them up and note them down so that's about it for today's video I hope you like it and before I say bye-bye to you guys I want to address one

questions that many of you might have which is I just don't have anyone literally like anyone to talk to in English and I also don't live in an English-speaking environment so what do I do it's okay it's totally fine let me tell you it's totally fine just try to spend more time on practicing the drills I mentioned in the "Before section" and when the chances actually come whether is a language exchange partner english speaking friend random stranger who speaks English or your classmate your colleague etc etc you will be ready to speak English with them

isn't that amazing so anyway thanks so much again for watching today's video I hope you will find it helpful and I'll see you in the next video okay bye bye-bye