Hey there! This is TOP 349. Why Your English Is Better Than Your Speaking
**You read English. You understand English. You’ve been learning for years, but when it’s time to speak your mind just freezes, and the words don’t come out. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. My name’s Ola, and this is Teacher Ola Podcast. I’m here to help you finally speak out loud. This isn’t about perfect grammar or fancy vocabulary. This is about your voice. Your words. Your real English.
In today’s episode, I’m talking about why you shouldn’t wait to feel ready before you start speaking English.
I’m sharing the reasons why speaking needs to be part of the learning process, not something you save for later.
And there couldn’t be a better time to talk about this because Speaking Club Zero starts this Thursday, August 13!
It’s part of my Say It Out Loud course and it’s all about putting the English you already know into practice.
So if you’re ready to stop waiting and start speaking, come join us! But first, test this. Check if this is the right level for you right now, go to teacherola.com/test. Ok, let’s see WHY you should have started speaking yesterday!
One. YOU ARE CONFUSING “NOT FLUENT YET” WITH “NOT READY”
This is, in my opinion, the central idea of the whole problem.
You think: “My English is good, but my speaking is A2.”
My take is this: Exactly! And that is not a reason to postpone speaking. That’s the reason you need to speak. It’s the distinction between knowledge and performance.
You may know a lot of English. You may understand podcasts, films, articles, conversations bla bla bla. But when you have to produce language yourself, the knowledge isn’t sufficiently automated.
The problem isn’t necessarily a lack of linguistic knowledge. It may be a lack of proceduralisation. In other words, you know more English than you can currently use quickly.
Imagine I give you ten seconds to complete this sentence:
“If I had a million dollars, I…”
You know exactly what comes next.
“…would travel the world.”
It’s grammar, it’s the second conditional. Haven’t you studied it before? Maybe not, but if you heard this sentence, you would understand it. If I had a million dollars, I would travel the world. Understandable, easy.
But now imagine you’re in an actual conversation. Someone asks you a completely unexpected question. You’re listening to them, thinking about your answer, choosing your words, trying to sound natural, and suddenly you realise you are not able to produce this kind of a sentence on your own. And that’s a processing problem.
And that is where the research becomes really useful.
Research on second language speech shows that speaking places substantial demands on working memory and executive control because learners have to formulate and produce language in real time. Neuroimaging research has also found that greater fluency is associated with changes in brain activation during speech production.
Your brain needs practice turning English you know into English you can access quickly. That’s scientifically respectable and understandable.
The main thing here is this: You don’t need to become fluent before you start speaking. Speaking is the thing that helps you become fluent.
Number two. POSTPONING SPEAKING CREATES A VICIOUS CYCLE
You say: “I’ll start speaking when I feel more confident.” But confidence doesn’t magically arrive first. You can construct the cycle:
One, I don’t feel good enough → two, I don’t speak → 3, I don’t get speaking practice → 4, speaking stays difficult → 5, I still don’t feel good enough → 6, I avoid speaking again.
What if we flipped the script:
One, I speak → two, I discover I can actually communicate → three, I notice what I struggle with → 4, I practise it → 5, speaking gets easier → 6, I become more willing to speak.
There’s actually a whole area of research around something called willingness to communicate, basically, how likely you are to actually open your mouth and use the language when you have the opportunity.
Liu and Jackson studied 547 first-year university students learning English in China. They found that many students were willing to communicate in general, but were reluctant to risk speaking English in class. And here’s the interesting part: these weren’t people who didn’t want to communicate with other people. Many of them were perfectly willing to have conversations.
But when it came to speaking English, they didn’t want to take the risk.
They were afraid of being evaluated, making mistakes, speaking in front of others.
And the researchers found a significant relationship between language anxiety and unwillingness to communicate.
And this is where I want you to stop and think.
If you keep waiting until you feel confident enough to speak, you may be waiting for the very thing that speaking practice is supposed to help you develop.
Research consistently shows a strong relationship between language anxiety and willingness to communicate.
And when you put that together with what we know about practice, you can see how easy it is to get stuck in a loop.
Three. YOU CAN’T “DO ALL THE SPEAKING LATER”
You might be asking yourself: “Can I learn grammar and vocabulary now and simply start speaking when I’m ready?”
And the answer is:
Not if you want speaking to feel automatic.
You can’t spend six months learning English and then decide:
“Right. From Monday, I’m going to be fluent.”
Speaking needs repeated exposure and repeated retrieval over time. In other words: you need to practise speaking again and again over time.
A 2024 study looked at 116 Japanese learners of English. They were randomly divided into groups and received four fluency-training sessions. The researchers compared different spacing schedules: some sessions were separated by one day, others by seven days.
Then they tested the learners again 7 and 28 days later.
Both spacing conditions produced similar fluency gains at those later tests.
You don’t need one enormous speaking marathon. You need repeated opportunities to speak.
They didn’t give these people another 500 vocabulary items. They didn’t make them memorise another list of irregular verbs. They got them to speak. And then speak again. And again. And again.
This is why I don’t want you to think of speaking as the final stage of learning English. Speaking needs to be part of the learning process itself.
Let’s practice now! Listen to these 10 sentences and repeat the out loud, ok? Let’s take this little step, say these sentences out loud, let’s go:
Haven’t you studied it before?
I become more willing to speak.
What if we flipped the script?
They were afraid of being evaluated.
Confidence doesn’t magically arrive first.
If I had a million dollars, I would travel the world.
And that is where the research becomes really useful.
You know more English than you can currently use quickly.
You need to practise speaking again and again over time.
You don’t need to become fluent before you start speaking.
And before you go, don’t forget to grab your free worksheet for this episode at teacherola.com/349.
And that’s it for today’s episode. I hope it’s made you think differently about your speaking skills and, especially, about this idea that you need to become “ready” before you start speaking. You don’t.
If you already know a lot of English but still struggle to use it quickly and confidently in real conversations, that doesn’t mean you need to wait. It means you need to start using that English more. Because speaking isn’t the final stage of learning English. Speaking is how you develop your speaking skills.
And that’s exactly the idea behind Say It Out Loud. The course starts on the 13th of August, and it’s designed to help you take the English you already know and actually start using it regularly, actively, and in real communication.
Go to siol.pl to find out more. Better yet: go to teacherola.com/test and see if the level will suit you.
Thank you so much for listening. Please rate and comment, subscribe if you haven’t yet and above all: stay fearless, take care, and say it out loud. I love you, I believe in you, and I know you are ready to speak English. I’m your teacher, Teacher Ola, and you’ve been listening to Teacher Ola Podcast. Bye for now.