Fake it Till You Make it - Strategy for Learning English

Why you have to practise your English in real-life situations if you want to improve - and how to do it.

This week I want to talk about the expression fake it till you make it.

This expression means that you pretend or act like you know how to do something until you know how to do it. This can be applied to the English learning process, as a strategy to help you improve.

What I mean by this is, in order to improve your English speaking, you really should put yourself in situations where you have to speak and listen, even if you don´t feel ready, or if you believe your English is not yet good enough. This way, your English will improve at a faster rate and you will gain confidence in your ability.

Of course you will make mistakes. Naturally, you will feel frustrated, maybe even embarrassed at times - I know, I have been through all these situations in my Spanish language learning journey (still do sometimes!). And besides, when will you ever feel ready? At what point will you say ´I know enough English now´? My most advanced students never think they know enough. Learning a language is a never-ending process. You may never feel ´ready´.

So it is a natural progression of your language learning process that you be brave and practice in real life. Especially if you feel your English isn´t good enough.

Let me give you some examples of people who weren´t good enough.

What do you think of when you hear the names Walt Disney? Or JK Rowling, author of Harry Potter?

Do you think of the word success or the word failure?

For your information, Walt Disney was fired (sacked, made to leave his job) from a newspaper called The Kansas City Star because his editor thought he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.

JK Rowling had to survive on government welfare payments and her Harry Potter manuscript was rejected by 12 major publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it. Now she is worth more than 670 million dollars.

OK, so now that we have finished the pep-talk (motivational talk), let´s get down to business.

The strategy of fake it til you make it involves preparation.

Before you go into English-speaking situations it is a good idea to review some relevant vocabulary and practice your listening, in addition to your regular activities that you do to improve your English.

For instance, if you have to attend a meeting in English in a few weeks, spend as much time as possible beforehand listening to Youtube videos or podcasts in related topics, preferably in the same accent as the people you will have the meeting with, and practice with a teacher/friend/in the mirror so you become more confident with your speaking and pronunciation.

Listening practice really works, especially if you do it strategically - by listening to relevant topics and accents.

As part of the fake it til you make it strategy, you should have some expressions ready to ask in case you need people to repeat, or you need to clarify something that you don´t understand.

These specific expressions are really important in your learning process as they provide you with ways to clarify and understand and manage the situation, while you improve your understanding and fluency.

Below, you will find some essential expressions for this purpose.

The first expression is I didn´t catch that. If you say I didn't catch it that it could be that you didn't understand. Or it could be that the person didn't say it very clearly or very loud. Or it could be that there was if it's an online and internet problem. So you're not always bringing attention to your lack of skills in the language.

If you don't want to constantly say, Can you repeat? you could say, Can you run that by me again?

For example, sorry, I didn´t catch that, can you run that by me again?

And hopefully, you understand at least most of what they're saying. But maybe you need to check it, just to be sure. This is particularly important in meetings where you need to know exactly what people are saying.

If you want to clarify what is being said, you can say to clarify, you are saying that….

This helps you to be clear on what is being said, and for the other person or party to tell you if you're right or wrong,

If you are still not sure you understand, you could ask them to email you.

You could say, could you please send me an email, just with the main points? And then when you have it in writing, you can see it and you can read it perfectly and clearly and use a translator if necessary - (I recommend DeepL and Linguee, by the way).

If you are in an online meeting and you don´t understand very well, or you're worried in case you won´t understand very well, you could ask the people at the meeting if you can record the meeting - the meeting software usually has this function but you will need permission from the other attendees. This way, you can play the recording back later and make sure that you understand. Some meeting software also gives you the option of using subtitles, which can be very helpful to help you understand what the other person is saying, and also gives the impression that you understand quite well.
Watch this short video on how to prepare for meetings:

In conclusion, the main thing is to try to prepare in advance for English-speaking situations, and learn some expressions that will help you be clear on what is being said.

Practice these expressions, say them aloud again and again, until you feel confident speaking. It's okay to say the same expressions several times in one conversation, we all do that when we're speaking naturally.

Most of all, don't worry about making mistakes,

everybody does it, it is a natural part of the learning process.