I Passed a US Job Interview Without Speaking English | English Listening Practice

I passed a US job interview without speaking English. Three interviewers were sitting in front of me. I knew the answer to their questions but couldn't say a word. If you know a lot of words but can't speak English you gotta listen to this one. My English was good because I had studied for it for eight years at school but as soon as I was in front of them and they were speaking with me they asked me regular questions. I froze. I could not say anything. Now that I understand how it works I call this the mouth block. Back then I didn't know all this. So listen to this because if you struggle to speak English despite years of study maybe you even went to university and you deeply studied this language and still can't speak it when it really matters when you're under pressure or you don't feel as confident as this when you have to speak so that you can speak off the cuff listen to this because I really have something important to say. I went through a job interview with Americans in front of me. I passed the interview but I didn't know a word of English. How did that happen? I was 21 at that time and I walked into this room. The room was very large. There was a nice round table right in the middle of it. I remember this room to be a little dark. There were a few people right across me interviewers I think. I say I think because I couldn't understand enough of that event at that moment to actually tell you who those people were. I sat down smiling, ready to start the interview. Externally I was very cool, relaxed almost. They started talking you know corporate guys using a lot of big words to introduce their company. Princess Cruises is a cruise ship line so they spoke about their ships, how they came to be and a lot of things that I understood actually and they were also interesting to me but then at some point they stopped talking and I realized that they asked me a question. I didn't understand the question. I just realized that they stopped talking, looking at me, expecting something. That's the moment I panicked because I couldn't grab the question right. I was so focused on understanding those little words that I could grab out of the conversation. Memories from school, from what I studied. I was just focused on that, focused on understanding those little words so I completely missed the question. Can you repeat please? They asked me the same question again and I got it because I knew exactly what they asked me. It was a very simple question and the words started to come out in Italian. Tell me if this ever happened to you that you're about to speak English but the words that come out are in your native language. That's a crazy moment because you're completely unprepared and you're unprepared to realize that you're unprepared. What comes out of your mouth, what's about to come out of your mouth is very natural words, very natural structure. Things that you would only say if you really know the language. Things like things like or that's a great question or I never thought about that or I thought we talked about this next time or some kind of thing that really is fluent and it's in your native language. You try to let it out. This is what happened to me at that moment. I tried to let it out but then I stopped right before I finished my sentence or better right before that sentence came out of my mouth because I realized that it was in Italian. They couldn't understand. I panicked. I tried to translate into English those exact words that I was about to say even though I knew that they were too natural to have a direct translation but I didn't know what else to do and so I sat there completely silent, my smile kind of fading away, panicked, empty, silence. Those people were waiting for my answer but I didn't have one. Now here is what's crazy about that moment. The guy on my right spoke to me in Italian. I felt relieved. Someone who spoke my language. I was so happy. I was so happy and I started to speak in Italian with him and he told me Alberto are you shy? Let me tell you this in a regular English. Are you shy? Are you a shy person? I wasn't but at that moment I felt like I was because I couldn't speak and that's what shy people do when they can't speak. They don't speak and so I said yeah I am shy. What comes next is something you wouldn't believe. He turns to the other people in perfect English. Wow! I wish I had that English that time and he said he's just shy. This is the first time that he's in a very important meeting and so he just feels shy and it was all true. It was my first time in a big meeting. It felt very important. The room was large, opulent which means very elegant and those people in front of me were dressed in suits. I was kind of dressed in some kind of suit too probably. I was completely out of character and so it wasn't the me 21 year old. It wasn't that me and so when he said are you shy I said yes I am and what he portrayed was exactly that. I don't know if you've ever found yourself in this situation but usually you just want to disappear from the face of the earth. You want to go a hundred meters underground. You want to get buried there. Forget about that moment ever existed and this is how I left that room. They told me we'll let you know and I was like okay. So I walked out of that room thinking they won't get me. It's impossible. Little did I know that maybe two weeks later I received an email. They decided to hire me. They decided to hire me and I was supposed to get a plane that they paid the ticket for to go to the U.S. in Los Angeles, take the cruise ship from there and have a two-week training in which they told in which they were to tell me everything about the ship and then I was ready to get my contract started. Those two weeks were paid. Everything was paid for. A dream come true. Wow! Now you're probably asking me how if you couldn't say a word how on earth did you get your job? I wish I were you. You will probably say well I'm not so sure about that and I'll tell you later why but the point is that they didn't know about how badly I could actually speak English because I literally didn't say a word the whole time in English. I was supposed to work on a cruise ship. I didn't say a word during the interview because lucky me there was an Italian guy right next to it so he spoke for me and the reason why I passed the interview is because I basically lied. I didn't know it was a lie because that moment my shyness was real and although I knew that I wasn't a shy person at that moment I felt like I was. It took me some time to really get this straight. It took me some time to really understand what happened in that room and so let me tell you this if you think that you are shy if you think that the reason why you can't speak English is because you're shy let me tell you that that's not the case you're not shy even if you think you are because in real life you're an introvert when I say real life I mean when you speak your own native language you're an introvert so you don't go out and speak with strangers you know you don't do that that does not mean you're shy. Think of the last time you spoke with your family with your closest friends with someone who's really close to you would they describe you as shy with them probably they wouldn't right probably they describe you as uh as an outgoing person you know a person who speaks uh their mind also you know very direct maybe straightforward and this means you're not shy just like I wasn't and so the first thing I realized the first thing first lesson that I got is that being shy is very rare it's mostly that we feel unprepared for the situation we're in and when we feel unprepared it comes out as shyness but here is the difference shyness is a personality trait something that we almost believe we can't change but if it changes according to the situations it's not because you're shy you can't speak english simply because you're not prepared just like I wasn't in that situation it's like you trained your brain but your mind your mouth isn't trained to speak to let these words out to produce these sounds and that's the lesson that's the most important part what I had was a skill I'd never trained nobody basically had never taught me what to do with my mouth in the three seconds that someone stops talking and waits for me to speak so if you've ever frozen like that in a conversation if you had that mouth block too let me know down here in the comments I'm so curious to know when and where it happened and how the situation went for you but anyway if you think that this is how I got my first job in the US you couldn't be further for the truth getting hired didn't fix anything didn't fix my english one month later I was on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean completely lost and I was about to find out just how untrained my english really was but I'll tell you this in my next video I'll catch you there cheers