Read Along in English

Performance vs. Confidence in English

For many Israelis, communicating fluently in English isn’t just a matter of knowledge and skill, but to a large extent, confidence and self-esteem.

Regardless of the size of your vocabulary and how well you know the difference between Present Perfect and Past Simple, you’ll have difficulty expressing yourself spontaneouslyif you don’t believe in your ability to do so without too many mistakes. In other words:

Knowledge + practice + self-confidence=effective communication

If you’re missing one of the variables in the equation you’ll find it difficult to effectively express yourself in English.

It is important to note that confidence has more influence on the active skills (writing and speaking), than on the passive skills (reading and listening).

It is also worthwhile mentioning that regardless of your current level in English, you can improve your confidence and hence your overall performance, without necessarily enlarging your knowledge base. However, it is highly recommended to work on all parts of the equation simultaneously, because they complement one another.

In order to illustrate this, let’s look at two examples:

Shay is 37 years old; he has a Master’s Degree (M.A.) in business management and works as an R&D (research and development) department manager in a big technology company. Shay got very high grades in English tests when he studied in the university, he often reads complicated articles and research papers in English and he also spends a lot of time writing emails in English. He has no real problem expressing himself in English, although he sometimes can’t think of the right word to use in certain situations. When he does get stuck, instead of finding a different way of saying what he wants to express, he tends to get frustrated and lose his train of thought.

Tamir is 40 years old; he has a Bachelor’s Degree (B.A.) in Economics and owns a small chain of hardware stores in the center of the country.  Tamir barely passed the English exam in the university and doesn’t have many opportunities to read in English. He prefers watching movies in English without the subtitles. His active communication skills in English are put to the test when he travels abroad on business or for pleasure. Although he makes countless mistakes (vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation), he feels that the people he speaks with understand him and for him that’s the most important thing.    

When they were asked to describe their subjective confidence level in English, this is what each one had to say:

Shay: I speak English very well, but my confidence level is very low, because I know that I make embarrassing mistakes.

Tamir: I know that my English level isn’t so high and I make a lot of mistakes, but I get by. I’ve never been in a situation where I wasn’t able to express what I needed to communicate in English. I don’t care what people think of my grammar and vocabulary, as long as they do what I want them to do.

So we can see that there isn’t necessarily a direct connection between a person’s confidence level in English and his or her actual performance level.  As I mentioned above, more knowledge and skill can have a positive effect on confidence and vice versa. However, the best strategy is to work on improving both at the same time; and the best way of doing that is to use English actively as much as possible, preferably under the guidance of a native speaking English teacher.