Pavla sat down on my couch and looked at the floor.
Her hands were in her lap. The left hand held onto the right.
She didn’t smile.
I could feel the tension inside her.
This wasn’t at all the person I expected to meet.
You see, after she emailed me and told me she was interested in learning about my program, I clicked the link to her website.
Pavla was a successful woman. She had employees. Magazines wrote about her. She spoke in front of large audiences and people listened.
But when she had to speak English… everything change.
Her confidence, her skills, her charm… As we say in English, it all went out the window.
And she hated it!
She hated the way she felt when she used the same simple sentences over and over… she hated not being able to say what she wanted… do what she wanted… she hated asking someone to repeat what they said…
What she really wanted was for her business to grow and to expand to other countries.
And for that she needed a higher level of English.
For Pavla, English was not just a foreign language.
It was a nightmare.
On her list of things she wanted to fix:
- She started sentences but didn’t know how to finish them
- She was afraid of making mistakes…
- She learned new words but quickly forgot them. And the words she did know, she didn’t use them all when speaking…
- And of course, she got nervous when she had to speak.
Any of these sound familiar?
Since you’re reading this, my guess is most, or maybe all, are.
That’s because Pavla is not unique. I’ve met many, many Pavlas.
From different countries, different ages, men and women…
They’ve all been learning English for years.
Their level is… OK. Or kind of OK. Or pretty good.
But it’s not good enough.
And they’re stuck.
They don’t know what to do.
The old methods stopped working.
And they blame themselves.
I hear students use words like: lazy, bad memory, no talent for languages…
But that’s not true.
There’s another reason Pavla wasn’t improving.
What was that reason?
That’s the subject of my next blog post…