How To Start Speaking Another Language When You’re An Introvert (And You Don’t Speak At All)
If you often find yourself hiding in the corner during any public event and mentally kicking yourself throughout the whole evening for not being able to come over and join a conversation, there's a 99.9% chance that your diagnosis is introversion. Now, if severe attacks of expressive aphasia happen to you in your normal English-speaking environment, we both know what terror you experience when attempting to communicate in a language you barely know.
As an introvert who habitually tries to avoid any type of oral communication in whatever tongue, I know how challenging it can be to start speaking a foreign language. Nevertheless, with the right approach, it is more than possible and even not so painful.
Read on to learn how to overcome this fear of expressing yourself in your target language - an introvert-friendly way.
Why is it harder for introverts to start speaking another language?
Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (which, in my opinion, is like an analogue of the Bible for introverts), describes our typical "character bugs" with striking precision:
"Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk but enjoy deep discussions."
Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
The major problem should be clear by this point. To learn to speak a language, you have to start speaking it at one moment or another. But, as an introvert, you tend to see speaking in general as a last resort.
If you have zero desire to express yourself, nothing will make you open your mouth. You may have the perfect understanding of a foreign language - but still don't speak it. (Unfortunately, this is a fairly common phenomenon: introverts tend to be better language learners but our extra-low willingness to communicate undermines our success when it comes to using the language.)
Quiet power: A different approach to language learning
Does all this mean that you are doomed to stay mute, no matter how much time you devote to learning a foreign language?
No. You can start speaking another language and have great conversations despite being an introvert. However, your approach has to be very different from the one proposed by "speak-in-a-week" courses. You want to adjust it to your personality type and address your tendency to:
Slip into the listening mode;
Seek deep conversations and do everything possible to avoid small talk;
Open your mouth only when you have something to say;
Look for one-to-one conversations and shun group discussions.
So how, with all this in mind, can you help yourself start speaking another language?
How introverts can prepare themselves for conversations in a foreign language
There are way too many courses out there that promise to turn anyone from an introvert to a hamster into a fluent speaker of language X in a week.
And these courses work - for people with a certain personality type (here is a hint: it starts with E). Introverts, however, often get disappointed, and for a simple reason: we have a different understanding of what a conversation should look like.
Is small talk unavoidable?
Introverts don’t need to share a bottle of wine to start one of those deep conversations that last for hours. But despite your drive for this kind of stuff, you simply don’t have the linguistic tools for maintaining such discourse in a foreign language as a learner.
Simply put, you can’t keep a valid conversation going when your vocabulary size is limited to 1000 words. What you will have is small talk of the type, “Hey, how are you? My name is Alina. I’m from Russia. Yes, I like Spanish.”
Let’s admit it: anyone can memorize 10 simple phrases to introduce themselves. The question is whether this is all you want. For most introverts, the answer would be no.
In this case, forget about the common advice to start speaking a foreign language from day one. Do the opposite: learn to listen first.
Conversation is not just speaking
Many learners miss out on a very important point. A good conversation in any language starts with listening and understanding the other party. There is little point in speaking if you are completely off-topic. For this reason, learning to speak a foreign language starts with learning to understand it.
There is no rocket science behind this. Comprehension can be improved only through massive exposure to the target language. Read, listen, and read and listen a lot, while ensuring that you are getting comprehensible input, and you will be ready to play your favorite listener’s part in two to three months.
Once you start to understand people, half of the problem is solved. You will feel less anxiety at the thought of having conversations since now you are less likely to get caught off guard by a question you didn’t understand. Moreover, when natives see that you understand them (even though you don’t speak much), they will be more likely to keep talking to you in their language.
Wait for that feeling
After bombarding your hemispheres with foreign language input long enough, you'll see an interesting thing happening. More and more often, your brain will start throwing fragments of thoughts at you in the language you're learning, just like now.
It will feel like you think in two different languages simultaneously, and that’s a great sign. It means that you are ready to move on. Once you catch yourself thinking in your target language, try to put yourself into a variety of "F***, I have to say something" situations with speakers of your target language.
But do it smart.
Practice in a Controlled Environment
We introverts are great at having long and deep conversations –
with ourselves. You should be the first person you want to start speaking a foreign language with.
Once a part of your brain switches to your target language, you should slowly progress from having these silent dialogs with your alter-ego to thinking aloud, to having one-to-one conversations with a real person.
Exiting the silent mode can be a tough task. The only solution I have found so far for making this transition smoother is Pimsleur courses. Hands down, Pimsleur is the best friend of introverted language learners. I don’t know any other program that creates a safer environment for practicing speaking skills on your own.
I used Pimsleur (and nothing else) to prepare for the speaking part of the French DELF B2 exam, and I still passed the test. So, yes, this thing trains you to speak even when you don’t get to talk to real human beings. And since most of our problems with speaking stem from our psyche, rather than anything else, I find that overcoming this mental barrier with Pimsleur saves me a bunch of nerve cells.
Avoid Perfectionism
Many of us suffer from what Dr. Krashen would call “over-monitoring” our language use.
Introverts tend to be very good language students with quasi-perfect knowledge of grammar rules. So we tend to monitor everything we are about to say so that it sounds more or less grammatical. Needless to say, it slows down the response from our conversation partner and creates long, uncomfortable pauses.
What needs to be understood here is that knowing a rule does not necessarily lead to applying it unconsciously.
Even after years of practice, you will still make stupid errors just because you are not a native speaker. I’ve been learning English for the last five years and lived in an English-speaking country for the last two. Nonetheless, something like “it doesn’t seem” or “I didn’t listen” may still come out of my mouth despite all my linguistic education.
You will have enough time to perfect your grammar once you start speaking a foreign language regularly. But before that happens, avoid fixating on grammar and focus on conveying your thoughts instead.
How Introverts Can Start Speaking a Foreign Language without Anxiety
Introverts do not necessarily come in the form of nerdy individuals that avoid big companies like the plague and barely say a word in meetings (as society likes to portray us).
We do speak and we do enjoy socializing the same way the rest of the world does. The only difference is how and with whom. Some of us need to create aquarium-like conditions to feel comfortable speaking, such as:
Limiting your interlocutors to people you know very well
Reducing the number of humans per square meter to a minimum
Removing any external source of noise
From personal experience, the quieter the environment is, the fewer people there are in the group, and the better I know them, the more comfortable I feel expressing my thoughts.
If you can relate, then creating such an environment should be your first priority if you want to start speaking a foreign language.
Two Ways to Find the Right People
The perfect learning situation for introverts would be to have a nice face-to-face conversation over a cup of tea with a good friend. But let’s be realistic: you have to go through nine circles of hell just to find that person, and then invest a good amount of time in getting to know them well.
Unfortunately, more often than not, any attempt to find a conversation partner awfully resembles looking for a date. HelloTalk becomes a linguistic analog of Tinder, and Polyglot Club in my eyes turns into a blind date. Yikes, right?
I find that a better way to find the right people is to build on your interests and to look for communities of like-minded people abroad. For instance, one smart decision of mine was to depart to Spain for a couple of weeks and take a scuba-diving course with a Spanish-speaking instructor. Needless to say, such an experience did help me loosen my tongue quite a bit.
Keep in mind that to do so, you already have to have reasonably good language skills and a certain level of determination. In any case, I don’t recommend disembarking in foreign lands with a phrasebook.
Change your environment
What I noticed from personal experience is that there are only two ways I can get myself speaking (whatever language): in a group of close friends or out of necessity.
This “out of necessity” option is worth considering. When you don’t have another choice but to start speaking another language (given that you know that language), you have a better time getting out of your shell.
There are various ways to burn your ships. Go to another country for a study exchange, employment, volunteering, or learning a skill. Or do similar things in your home country if you find your target-language community there. Everything goes as long as it puts you in regular and, what’s more important, inevitable contact with native speakers. Create an environment that pushes you to speak the language – going “just for travel” never works.
For example, while I live in Ontario (which is an English-speaking province of Canada), I committed to completing a part of my university degree in French. This way, every year, I have to take at least a couple of linguistic courses in French. So far, having a boatload of coursework has done a good job of forcing me to speak, write, and think in French on a regular basis.
Start speaking another language the introvert-friendly way
If you are an introvert, speaking will always be one of the hardest skills to harness. But you need to accept that you have a hard time speaking not because you’re bad at languages, but because you use language differently.
You may have a good proficiency level, but some parts of you would still insist that you can’t speak your target language. What you have to understand is that this sense of insecurity comes from the lack of practice, and the latter stems from your personality.
But eventually, it all comes down to preparing well and putting yourself in the right situation. You won’t have any problem starting to speak another language if you already understand it well. So get to know yourself, sharpen your comprehension skills, and create the environment that would push you forward. Leave all the rest.
