Hi, everyone!

I'm Georgiana, founder of SpeakEnglishPodcast.com. My mission is to help YOU to speak English fluently and confidently.

Today I'll talk about correction when speaking English and how it affects your fluency.

Later you'll practice your speaking with a funny mini-story.

Before we get started, I wanted to say hello to a student named Gabriela from Brazil. She wrote a comment saying that she loves the podcast and that she feels that she's having a real conversation when she practices with the lessons.

Hi, Gabriela! Thanks for the comment. It's great that you're using the podcast to improve your listening and speaking! With a little patience, you'll soon notice a significant improvement.

Let's start!

A student asked me this question not long ago:

"Is it effective to be corrected when you speak?"

Let's say you're an English student, and you're trying to practice your speaking. Your first idea is to hire a tutor who will correct all your mistakes.

At first, it seems like a great idea to be corrected. Every time you make a mistake, the tutor will tell you the correct pronunciation, and that's how you'll learn to speak correctly.

Yet, based on my vast experience as an English teacher, I must be honest with you and tell you that this approach isn't practical. In fact, overcorrection prevents you from developing fluency.

And when I talk about fluency, I mean speaking without pausing too often. It's when you're making some mistakes, but you're not continually hesitating.

The problem with being corrected too often is that you're always being interrupted.

For example, you're trying to explain that a friend of yours is getting married.

You start saying: "A friend of me…"

And you haven't even got the chance to say anything else when the tutor already stops to correct you.

He'll say something like this: "No! No! No! No! It's not a "friend of me. It's a friend of mine."

After that, you'll try again: "A friend of me...sorry...a friend mine...will get married."

I guess that you get the idea.

Because of the early correction, you'll get nervous from the beginning, and you'll forget your ideas.

When students are corrected too many times, they tend to overanalyze what they're saying. They pause very often just to make sure that what they're trying to say is correct. So, they're not thinking about what to say but how to say it. It's really unnatural to communicate like that. That's why speaking becomes frustrating and exhausting for many English students.

I repeat this idea because it's vital. The student isn't thinking about what to say anymore but how to say it.

That's why being corrected too often won't help you develop your English fluency. Every time you'll try to speak English, you'll become stressed out, and you won't enjoy having a conversation.

Does this mean that you should never be corrected? Well, no, no. That would be extreme. You can be corrected from time to time, and about repetitive errors.

In any case, your tutor could point out these errors at the end of the conversation and allow you to express yourself even when you're making some minor mistakes. It will help you to build up confidence, and you'll feel more relaxed.

Remember how I always tell you to listen, listen, and listen?

Native English speakers never think of rules or regulations when they speak, and they're definitely not worried about how to say things.

And it's because they have been listening to the correct forms thousands of times. They've heard their parents and friends speak correctly; later, they've started watching TV shows and reading books. Does this sound familiar to you? Because that's exactly what you've done with your mother tongue.

That's why native speakers are always capable of speaking without hesitating and without making any mistakes, which is why I constantly urge you to listen a lot to get that intuition of what' right and what's wrong.

Let's move on to the next section.