3 things that will get you speaking with natives more fluently

You might be someone who can speak a different language, but when it comes to actually talking with natives, you freeze up quite a lot, or they say something you didn't expect and you don't know how to react.

It's one thing being able to understand the theory and grammar and vocabulary of a different language. Being able to speak it, and understand what they're saying fast enough to have a conversation, is a different skill in itself. Many language apps, YouTube and online resources can't prepare you for it, because your brain has to think super quickly. It has to process what's being said, think of what it wants to say back, construct the words in the right order and say them, all while maintaining eye contact and doing everything else a socially acceptable conversation requires.

I've got 13 years of experience learning Spanish and Italian and I'm a native English person from Manchester. This isn't language specific, it's more psychological. Here are three techniques you can practise from this afternoon.

1. Don't try to understand every single word

Someone might say to me, "Oh, tomorrow I'm going for a walk in the park with my red dog." Red dog, that was a weird one. But you get the idea. I might only pick up on certain words.

The big trap is when your mind focuses on the word it doesn't understand. Maybe I don't know the word for dog in Italian and I'm thinking, "Hmm, what's that word?" My mind then disregards everything else it does understand and fixates on the thing it doesn't. That hijacks your brain: "I can't continue until I figure out what that means." And there's no way of figuring it out apart from looking it up on your phone, but then you're not really in the conversation.

So be accepting of not understanding everything:

• Focus on the gist, and on the previous sentences and what you're talking about.
• Use a bit of guesswork. What words do I know? What could they be saying in this situation?
• If you're not sure what they asked, say, "Oh, I think you mean this, is that all right?" or reply to the closest thing possible.
• If it's a bit off, they'll ask again or work out you thought they meant something else. That's fine.

They know you're putting effort into practising their language, so they'll respect you for it even if you mess up a bit.

The benefit is that you keep the conversation going. If you're at A2 or B1, where you can string a few words and phrases together but you're not completely conversational, your main goal should be having conversations, no matter how bad or slow. It's like going to the gym when you can't be bothered, so you do five minutes on the treadmill because you're there. You've done a session, even if it's really small.

2. Your past experiences can make you feel like you're not good at it

Next time you're about to talk to a group of native speakers, you might freeze up and think, "Whoa, what's going on here?" Your mind is telling you, "I can't do this." What's actually happening is that in the past you had a bad experience. Maybe you tried to say hello to a waiter but they were flat out and couldn't hear you, and you felt bad. "I thought I was okay at Spanish, but now I'm not."

That can carry forward to every future conversation. It can make you think native speakers don't like you, or that you're inferior to them. You might not realise it consciously, but you start speaking and think, "Oh crap, I need to do well here." It makes you stutter. Your brain is trying to avoid negative emotions, like embarrassment or shame.

Once you understand that, you're no longer blaming yourself and your abilities. It's like doing a presentation to a large group, or speaking with your boss. You have a full script, but when it comes to it you start halfway through or miss out a big chunk. That's because you're putting stress on yourself, and your brain isn't good at managing anxiety when it comes to performance.

So pick your situation. If I'm in Manchester in a bar and I can't hear my friend speak in English, I shouldn't try practising a different language there. If you can't understand your native language over the noise, there's no point, and you'll feel worse because you think you failed, when it was the situation.

3. Test what you learn as soon as you can

This one's controversial, because there's a lot of information online about when to start speaking as opposed to taking in input. My stance is that as soon as you learn something new in your target language, a phrase or a way of saying something, you should at the earliest opportunity try it by speaking it, because it reinforces what you learned.

Some people say you need 500 hours of listening before you say a single word. I get that. People think, "I need to be good at listening and know what I'm talking about first." The downside is you don't get the reinforcement your brain needs to know what's correct. It needs to hear the same thing from multiple sources before it saves it as "yes, this is important, it's correct". It doesn't want to waste its effort.

It's like writing something down on paper. You're more likely to remember it because it's another process, you're creating the words and using your hand. Speaking does the same thing.

• If you hear something new, test it with a native speaker or a language partner.
• Say you learned a new phrase in your Spanish class and think, "Is that right?" Try it with a native speaker who doesn't know you're having lessons. If they say, "Oh yeah, interesting," you get a positive response.
• I've had this so many times living in Spain. I learned something and thought, "I don't believe that's true." Then I tried it and it was correct. You tend not to believe something until you've heard it from multiple places.
• Your pronunciation might not be spot on, but if it's roughly right and in the right context, people normally understand. It's better to say it with a slightly off pronunciation than not at all.

That makes you feel good, and motivation is the main point, because you have to stay motivated past the four-week mark where most habits fail. Think of New Year, new me, new fitness. We don't want to make that mistake in language learning.

Once you get evidence that even though you're not perfect you can still say things and keep the conversation going, that's your goal. The more reps you put in, in time spent speaking and conversations had, the more used to it you'll be. Your brain gets used to needing that thing, so it saves it to long-term memory, and next time you don't freeze up. That lowers your anxiety, so you get more confident. It's a spiral where you keep getting better because you're enjoying it more.

Finally, you'll have seen links about Voco, the language conversation platform I created, powered by AI personas. You can see your mistakes, it learns from you and adjusts to your level, so it feels like you're talking to a friend rather than AI.