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Watch the Video for Lesson 4
Now, in the last couple of days we have given you some audio mp3 lessons that allow you to practice your listening in Day 2 and your speaking in Day 3. Those should have been pretty easy for you and that’s important. We want to start you with easy materials so that, number one, you can develop some confidence, and number two, you can experience the process of listening and speaking as a native speaker would. And that means speaking quickly, not worrying about what you are saying and how it sounds and also speaking in a confident way.
But that third part, being confident, how do you do that when at the very beginning you are not confident, you don’t have confidence? Some people might say, “Well, confidence is a feeling that I have or don’t have. So if I don’t have it, how can you ask me to be confident? That’s not so easy.” And you are right, it’s not so easy.
But the answer to that question lies in the title of today’s lesson: Fake It Until You Make It. And that’s a common phrase in English, “Fake it until you make it.” What does that mean? Well, it basically means to act as if you already were confident in this case. So when you act as if you were confident, you are doing exactly what actors do in the movies: to make themselves cry, to show anger, to show a range of different emotions. And it’s a fact that you can change the way you feel by the attitude that you have. You might not be able to just feel a certain way if you just want to feel that way. But if you change your attitude and you act as if, in this case, you were confident, and you do that frequently, you will start to notice that you will start feeling confident. And if you do that every day, you will develop a change within you and you will start feeling more confident in English conversations. And the beauty of our lessons is that you can practice being this confident English speaker in the privacy of your own home. And you will develop more and more confidence that way by doing lots of speaking, speaking out loud and having fun while doing it. You need to change your attitude to become a more confident speaker.
So this is what I want you to do. Today is Day 4 of our 7-day course. I want you to go back and take the same listening and speaking files that you used in Day 2 and Day 3, and I want you, especially the speaking, go back and do those speaking exercises again. But this time, I want you to focus on your attitude. I want you to be that confident speaker. What does this mean? Well, it means speaking out a lot. Expand on your answers. Try to answer as quickly as you can. Don’t worry about mistakes. In fact, make mistakes. Have fun with this. And when you do that, wow, you are going to notice a change in your feeling. It starts with the attitude and then it goes to the feeling. So be confident and have fun. And tomorrow, you will be ready for a brand new set of lessons about a completely different story where you can practice listening and speaking with the same attitude change. And of course, you will grow in confidence.
See you tomorrow.
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