If You Practise English Without a Teacher, Will You Get Worse..

We all know that if you want to get better at speaking English, you need to practice speaking English. So maybe you've been looking for ways to get that practice. And if you've learned English at school or at a language centre, then you're probably thinking, what I really need is some one-on-one sessions with a native English teacher. Someone who can listen while I speak and notice my mistakes and correct me when I'm wrong. Because you don't want to be practicing the wrong way and keep making the same mistakes, right? You want to know that the English that you're using is correct. So, of course, a teacher feels like the best, most effective option. But what if the most important part of your journey to fluent English doesn't actually need a teacher at all? Hey, ladies. Welcome back to everyone joining me from all around the world today. My name is Emma. I'm the founder of HeyLady. We bring together women who have learned English as a second language to practice speaking in real conversations so that they can build the confidence to use English at work, while they're traveling, and in all of those important everyday moments. If you've been learning English for a long time, but you are still struggling to speak confidently, you are in the right place. You don't have to do this journey alone anymore. We are right here for you. Today's episode was inspired by a really honest question we received on Instagram. Emma, if I talk to other learners, I'll just make the same mistakes as they do. Who's going to correct my mistakes and help me to improve? It's a fair question. Because if you've spent years learning English at school or through courses, then you've been taught that improving means making fewer mistakes. And to make fewer mistakes, you need someone, a teacher, a native speaker, or an expert to tell you where you're wrong. So if you're used to learning this way, well then practicing with other learners who are also making mistakes might not make a lot of sense. You might be thinking, how will I improve if nobody is correcting me? So let's start here. When you learn English at school or through a course, so much of your time is spent trying to get the right answer. You learn the rules, you do the exercises, then you get tested in some way. Maybe you take an exam or you complete a quiz and your work is checked. And that's when you get to find out what you got right and what you got wrong. And you also find out did your level go up or not. And of course, that is really helpful. You need grammar, you need vocabulary, you need somebody to explain how the language works. I'm not suggesting that you throw all of that away, not at all. The problem is that over time, this way of learning makes you feel like English is about being right or wrong. There is a right way and a wrong way. And as a learner, you don't know what's right and wrong. You need a teacher to tell you. So when you take that mentality into a conversation and you're speaking, you are paying more attention to the mistakes that you might make rather than to the idea that you are trying to share. And you feel embarrassed and you worry, am I using the right tense? Am I pronouncing the word wrong? And it feels so much safer when someone is there to give you the right answer. And I understand that. Nobody likes feeling embarrassed. Nobody likes being misunderstood. But correction isn't the problem. Teachers aren't the problem. The problem starts when correction becomes the thing that you depend on before you're willing to speak. So you can only speak when you are sure and confident that someone is going to help you in those moments that you get stuck. Imagine that you are in a classroom or you are having a private lesson with a teacher and you forget a word that you need. So you pause, you're thinking about it and they give it to you. Phew! Oh, it feels like a helpful little rescue in your moment of need. They saved you from getting stuck. Now, a really good teacher may not always give you the answer straight away. They might prompt you. They might ask you, can you describe it in a different way? They might give you a little extra time and space to think, to find the word or to talk your way around the problem. And that's really useful because they are helping you to become less dependent on them. But often that's not what English learners are asking for when they say, who will correct my mistakes? Often what they really want is someone to be there to catch the mistake, to give them the right word and to make sure that they've never gone too far wrong. And that can feel very safe and good because they can avoid feeling embarrassment and shame. But in a real conversation, you don't have your teacher there, right? You need to get comfortable being the person who's in control. So when you get stuck, and you will, it's you that has to do something about it. So you describe it, or you give another example, or maybe you use your hands a little. Maybe you start to feel the heat rising in your cheeks because the word that you needed was right there a second ago, and now it's completely gone. But somehow you managed to get It was messy. It was imperfect. But that moment, that experience teaches you something really important. I can handle this. I can get stuck and keep going. I can make a mistake and still be understood. I can find another way to say what I mean. And that is what you are actually trying to build in your spoken English. Independence. Independence is being able to trust yourself to communicate with the English that you already have. And you build that trust through experience. If someone is always there to save you, you don't get as many chances to discover what you can do without being rescued. Those chances are really important. They are like gold. So I want to talk a little bit about getting feedback. This is where I notice a lot of my students get confused. They think that if there's no teacher correcting them, then there's no feedback. They don't learn or improve. As if somehow it's only a teacher who can offer feedback. Feedback, any feedback, is really just a signal or an answer to the question, how did I go? How did I do? And every conversation gives you feedback. You can see it when someone understands you. When they're following along. And you notice if they start to look a little confused. It signals that you might need to explain something another way. You hear it when they ask a question to try and clarify what you mean. You get to discover which words come really easily to you and which ideas are more difficult to express. You get to discover where your gaps are. And your speaking partner might be part of that too. They can help you find a word. You might help them. You're both listening and responding and adjusting and working things out together. That is learning. You're learning how to get your message across. You're learning how to recover when something doesn't work. You're learning how to trust yourself to keep going in those moments where you get stuck. And you know what? You don't need a teacher with you in that moment for you to experience that feedback and to learn from it, to grow from it. At Hey Lady, we have qualified English teachers supporting our whole community. But we call them English coaches. And that's not just a different name. It describes a different job. In a traditional language class, your teacher usually follows a curriculum. They explain the language that you're learning. They help you to practice it. They correct your mistakes and they guide you through a course. It's a really important role. The role that we all need as we are starting out for sure. Someone who feeds us the information that we need to know. But Hey Lady is built to support intermediate to advanced level English learners. And it's built for your life outside the classroom, beyond the classroom. Which is why we believe the goal of learning English is to become an independent English speaker. Being able to have a conversation without a teacher being beside you. Learning how you can be in the driver's seat. And you can be in control, taking your English in the direction that you want to go. Because you don't need to learn all of English. You don't need to do that. I don't know all of English. You don't need to know all of English. But you do need to keep developing the English that really matters to you in your life, in your work, in your relationships, and in the things that you want to be able to do. Our English coaches aren't there to lead every conversation or tell you everything that you need to say next. Their job is to help you notice where your English needs work. They also encourage you to take the next step yourself. To notice what you need, to practice it, and to try it in a conversation to learn from what happens next. So over time, you are not always relying on a teacher to be there telling you what you need to do and what you need to learn. You're becoming better at recognizing that for yourself. And that is what we mean by independence. Now, maybe that sounds a little different to the way that you've learned English before. And I can understand that. So the best way to actually understand Hey Lady is to come and experience it for yourself. Come and meet some of the women in our community. Join a few conversations and discover how much you can already do with the English that you have. And let's build from there. You can get started with a free seven-day trial. The link to join is in the show notes. Or if you're watching on YouTube, you can also scan the code that you see on screen now. Thank you so much for being here with me today. And one thing that I want you to remember as we wrap up this episode today, independence doesn't come from constantly being corrected. It comes from trusting yourself and building the confidence to communicate. So with that said, I will see you in the next episode, and hopefully inside Hey Lady very soon. Bye for now.