Beating Speaking Anxiety: 3. I’m scared I won’t understand people

Language anxiety often stems from a fear of not understanding others, a challenge exacerbated by the significant gap between classroom English and real-world natural speech. Learners frequently struggle with fast-paced dialogue, regional accents, and idiomatic expressions, such as the British greeting "you're right," which can lead to social withdrawal or critical communication failures in high-stress environments like airports. Erhan Aslan, an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, observes that these negative experiences accumulate into psychological barriers, particularly when students are only exposed to scripted American media. Developing listening resilience requires exposure to unscripted content like talk shows and interviews, which showcase natural hesitations and pauses. Effective coping strategies include maintaining composure during misunderstandings and using direct clarification phrases to ask speakers to slow down. Ultimately, successful communication prioritizes achieving a result over linguistic perfection, requiring learners to persist through the discomfort of imperfect understanding.