The secret to speaking back to natives without freezing up

Have you ever been in a conversation with a native speaker where you know exactly what you want to say back, but when it's time to speak, your mind goes completely blank? What if there's a bigger reason why you freeze up? What if the problem is that you've spent so much time learning and understanding the language that you haven't had a chance to retrieve it and practise producing the words?

You can spend hours on a language app or watching YouTube or listening to podcasts, and as soon as someone native asks you a completely normal question, your mind freezes. You should know the words, but they're just not available. Say someone asks, "What did you do last weekend?" Your brain knows the words somewhere, maybe the word for restaurant or walk, but in that moment you can't retrieve them. And even if you did, putting them in the right order in real time feels very different and is very difficult.

That's the difference between knowing something and actually being able to use it. If you can understand what's being said but find it hard to say the words, that's the difference between recognition and retrieval. It's three layers: recognition, retrieval and speaking.

Why conversations are so hard

Many online tools don't let you practise both sides of a conversation. You can watch content, but speaking and replying to natives needs your mind to do a different process. All at once, you have to:

• understand what someone says
• decide what you want to say back
• find those words
• assemble them into a sentence
• pronounce it
• look at the native speaker's face and reaction to see whether you said it correctly, and if not, try again in a slightly different way

That's why even if you feel good at the language, you know a lot of words and grammar, you can still find it super difficult to have a conversation.

It's not always nerves

A big talking point is nerves. That might be a factor, but we can also blame nerves for lack of practice. We tend to do more of what we like, so if we don't like speaking, we don't practise it and we're not used to it when we do. Quite often it's a lack of practice producing the words and retrieving what you need.

If I asked you to explain something in English with a whole crowd looking at you, and you knew the topic off by heart, you'd get into flow and could speak about it for days. You'd still be a bit nervous, but you've said the words many times before, so you're comfortable. If I asked about a topic you didn't know much about, you couldn't answer properly anyway, even though you're relaxed.

What to practise

The answer is to practise the specific situations you'll need: asking for directions, negotiating at a market, small talk, or explaining how you feel at the doctor. You're learning it for a reason, so make that reason the scenarios you learn. Then break each situation down into levels of difficulty.

1. Say it out loud. Read a list of phrases from a piece of paper or screen. You're not learning them yet, you're getting used to saying them. For directions: "Where is the bus stop?", "Where can I find...", "How do I get to...".
2. Say it from memory. Take away any help and repeat it several times so it gets drilled into your head.
3. Change one variable. Instead of "Where is the bus stop?", try "Where is the train station?" or "Where is the beach?". You're understanding how the structure works, so you can use the same phrase in different situations.
4. Use a script. Read out one side while someone else, maybe a native speaker, reads the other. Then do it from memory, so someone says something to you and you say something back.

I know a lot of you will be thinking you can't predict what someone will say in real life, because there's no script. This is to get you used to pronouncing the words and understanding how phrases work. Then practise with a native speaker and ask them to ask you questions that aren't on the script, and try to work out what they could be asking. If you're at a supermarket, they might ask what size bag you want. It's not on your script, but think how that conversation would go in your native language.

The main mistake

The main mistake is going from "I can understand this sentence in a textbook or on YouTube" to "now I'll have a conversation with a native speaker". There's a massive gap in between, because you've understood what's being said but you haven't practised the retrieval, producing the words you want to say.

The reason to learn scenarios is that you're not trying to learn the whole language at once, and the scenarios you pick will be relevant and interesting to you. It might feel repetitive going over the same scenario every day, but that's the point. When you say the same things over and over, your brain, mouth and pronunciation get used to it. You're turning retrieving and pronouncing the right words into automation.

So next time you freeze in a conversation, don't instantly blame nerves. Think about how much practice you've had. If coming up with the words and pronouncing them feels a bit alien, that's a good signal to look at which scenarios matter to you and get good at the relevant phrases without anything written in front of you. You don't always need more confidence. You just need to put more reps in.

If you're struggling to get conversation practice, I made a platform called Voco, designed to help you not freeze up. As you talk, you can see written suggested responses on the side to tell you "if you freeze up, here's what you could say". It works on desktop and your phone.