English Speaking Phobia

[salt&pepper]

Whenever I speak to native (english speaking), i'll get very nervous and i'll start to stammer. The phrasing, sentence structure & grammar of my sentences become all in a mess. I'm fine with writing emails etc. I have no idea what's wrong with me. I'll also forgot all the content of the conversation which makes me unable to explain at all.

I tried various way to calm myself when i speak to native but it doesn't seem to work. Is there any remedy or ways to improve?

[Tdol]

Try remembering that you are doing the hard work- it's easy to be a native speaker, but much harder to be a non-native speaker. Any idiot can speak their mother tongue, but speaking a second language takes more work.

[salt&pepper]

Thanks for the encouragement.

It doesn't help that everyone around me is able to speak fluently. How do I stay confident or build confidence in this case?
I feel embarrass when I communicate with others in English.

[SergeyP]

That is easy -- find an international community of people who all have English as their second language, and who don't have the same native language as you. Then, among people who also do a lot of mistakes you'll fell youself more confident, and will start to concentrate on ideas that you want to express, not on mistakes that you do.

[Stephanie S]

I think the best way is to just practise a lot. Practise speaking out loud by yourself, or with a friend who doesn't make you nervous. Reading out loud is another good exercise--you may feel you are not learning to produce speech when you read, but it is amazing what can be absorbed.

[MikeWalker]

Don't stress too much about it and just keep practicing. When you get tired of being afraid, it will all just flow right out of you! I'm sure you're doing just fine, just keep up with it and don't give up!

[emsr2d2]

It doesn't help that everyone around me is able to speak fluently.

With the exception of the native speakers, I will bet that isn't true. When I lived in Spain, I always thought that the other non-native speakers spoke better Spanish than me because they chatted away merrily in the company of Spaniards, and the Spaniards seemed to understand them perfectly well. I assumed that their Spanish was perfect. I was wrong. I spoke to many of them later and they told me that they were well aware that their Spanish wasn't very good but they had realised that the only way to improve was to speak. So they had swallowed their fears and decided that they would just talk and talk and talk, not worry about the mistakes, and learn as they went along.