Alan Palmer's Language Chat Podcasts

Hello everyone, Today I would like to talk about how better to get conversations started. When we learn languages, we always want so much to speak with native speakers – but at the same time, we also worry about it. Will they understand us? Will they find what we say interesting? Will they get frustrated with us, or bored, or both? Lots of these sort of thoughts go through our mind. Even if we are lucky enough to have friends who speak the language we are learning as native speakers, it doesn’t mean that we don’t still think these things. Another difficulty when speaking another language is that after we have said something, it is often difficult for us to remember what we just said! In our own language, we remember what words we say better than when we say something in a different language. I think this is because we are busy trying to think of correct words to use and make sure we are understood, so we only remember the ideas of what we were talking about, not the actual words we used to say it. Often,