How to build authenticity in English

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi and welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Birgit. I'm Dave. And I'm Rebecca. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hello and welcome to this episode. Today, our topic is going to be a more of a mindset topic. First of all, excuse my voice. I've got a bit of a cold. So that's why I found to sound a bit croaky today, but I will do my best. As some of you know, I am not only a trainer, an English trainer, I'm also a qualified coach. And I'm also studying positive psychology at the moment. And as part of my positive psychology studies, I'm looking at the connection between languages and psychology. And I've always believed for a very long time that languages are not just an academic topic and languages are emotional. Languages and how we speak and finding confidence, a lot of it is connected to emotions. So for me, mindset is a really important part of learning a language. It's not just about learning the mechanics of a language. It's also about having the right attitude, having the right mindset. Just to explain positive psychology, if you don't know anything about positive psychology, positive psychology is kind of one of the newer waves of psychology. So in the past, psychology often focused on what was wrong with people, what's wrong with us. So you looked into people's past and say, why do I feel like this? Why am I depressed? And we tried to fix, the psychologists would try to fix this negative feeling. Positive psychology is very much more focused on what next? How do I make myself happy? Because people would understand why they felt sad, but they didn't know how to fix it. They didn't know how to feel better. So the focus of positive psychology is about building happiness, building well-being, promoting well-being, finding ways to lead a more fulfilled and more alive with more well-being and happiness. Basically, that's the basic kind of concept of positive psychology. So one of the topics that we're in the main topic we're going to talk today about today is authenticity. In positive psychology, authenticity is quite a key component of positive psychology because studies have shown that if you are authentic, then generally you have higher levels of well-being. So the question is, what is authenticity, first of all, and how is this relevant for languages? What does this have to do with learning English? So first, I'm going to throw it to my colleagues here. First question, my co-hosts. Dave, when I say the word authenticity, what immediately springs to mind? Not necessarily about languages, but just generally what do you think of when you think about your being authentic? What are you doing? Yeah. Hello, everybody. I think it's being yourself in some way or form, being real to yourself, being real to yourself. I think that's the key message of being authentic or authenticity. Yeah, absolutely. What about you, Birgit? How do you see it? Do you agree? Yeah, hello today to everybody. Yes, what springs to my mind is not playing a role or trying to be somebody else. So that's more or less the same, as you said, being yourself, feeling connected to who you are, what you think, and not focussing on what maybe other people might expect from you. And that's always a very thin line, I think, especially in business surrounding or non-private life. It's been this inward and outward that they match what your values and what you believe is also how you behave and communicate. And of course, often we all sometimes don't show our true face. Perhaps we show, like Birgit said, what people expect or what is expected in a certain scenario. But generally, authenticity is about being yourself and being true to yourself and your real self, like Dave said. The question is, can you be yourself when you are speaking a foreign language? So for our listeners who are maybe learning English, do you feel like a different person when you speak English? Is your English you maybe not as good or not the same as your German you or your Spanish you or whatever you are? And how do we deal with that? Because we're saying authenticity, being authentic is promotes well-being, makes you feel good. Does that mean we don't feel good when we speak another language because we can't be ourselves? Which is kind of confusing. I wrote a post on LinkedIn about this a while ago and it was my most successful post because so many people reacted to this post because I think it is a really big topic among people who speak numerous languages. So Birgit, what do you think when you speak English? Obviously, English is your strongest second language. How do you feel? Is there an English Birgit? Is your English Birgit different to German Birgit? How do you feel? Do you feel good? Do you feel different? Obviously, I feel good. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this. You wouldn't be on the podcast. If I felt awful talking English, then I wouldn't talk English, obviously. Yes, I think I am a little different maybe than I might be in German because what goes into it is also a feeling and there we are with the emotions again. So but obviously and this is a point I want to mention on why has it become so many reactions on your LinkedIn because it's an emotional topic and you see if people want to speak a language good or well enough and they can't because they lack the ability, grammar and vocabulary, it's frustrating. They might want to be authentic selves but they are not there yet how to get there. As I'm concerned and when you ask me about my English self, of course, due to the long experience and so many conversations I've had in English, I feel comfortable and I felt comfortable in England learning the language. But there were moments, of course, when I felt awkward. It was hard. I couldn't express myself. And especially when you have an emotional situation, when you are excited or something, if you are excited, it's harder to find words. When you're feeling emotional, it can be quite difficult. Emotions are connected to the area where the language. Exactly. I think, yeah, that is an issue. Dave, what about you? Was German your strongest second language? Yeah. You lived in Germany for so long. Yeah. Is German, Dave, different to British, Dave? Definitely. 100 percent. Oh, really? Yeah. OK. I think we touched on it in a previous podcast. I feel I don't feel myself in German at all. It's like two different people literally. And I do wrestle with that because I would say generally speaking in English, I like to be a bit the laid back guy, the guy that has a bit of humour and shares the humour and tries to make people laugh because that's how I feel I am. That's the authentic you. Yeah. Yeah. Like to be easygoing, not too serious or anything like that. And because I don't have native level German or sometimes I don't feel that I'm able to make other people laugh or be funny in some cases. Yeah. That sort of makes me feel. You struggle with that. I struggle with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I can get better with it. But as I said, now I'm moving away from Germany. I don't really speak all that much German. It's changing again. Changing again with Spanish. Well, I don't have a hope in hell's chance anytime soon to feel Spanish. Dave doesn't exist. No, no, no, no. I can understand how people feel not themselves when they're speaking a foreign language. Absolutely. It's difficult. I think for me, I feel actually quite happy with German Rebecca. I feel very comfortable with German Rebecca. I do feel like I can express myself not always 100 percent, but I've accepted German Rebecca, the German Rebecca isn't perfect. And we'll come back to this later about how to be more authentic and how to feel better, because there are some tips, I think. German Rebecca is quite bossy. I mean, British Rebecca is quite bossy, to be honest. No, you don't say. No. Mom and dad and my brother are saying, she's really bossy. But I'm a husband. But German Rebecca is quite direct. You see, British Rebecca would be slightly more polite, use slightly different language. And German Rebecca, because of the culture, I've just learned to be a bit more direct and say what I want rather than talking around the point. Just say what you want and then you get what you want. You don't have to ask 20 sentences and make excuses. Just say what you want. This is interesting. Sorry. This is something I can't do. You still haven't got over that step? No, I'm still very direct. No, I'm still very British. And you would still be standing in that bakery and not get it because that was a story Rebecca said once. You would be standing there forever if you didn't. Waving. Hi. Hi. I want this. I need that. Ich bekomme. Yeah. Yes. One question I have to about feedback, because I remember when I lived in England, obviously I was learning, trying to get on a higher level. I got the feedback and humour was important there that they recognise, OK, she's funny. She can express human things. Is that important? And can you remember getting feedback from German people, David, you two, who then motivated you to go on and give you a good feeling? I think that comes into it as well when you learn. You mean feedback about my language or what about the language skills? Yes. How people receive you as a person or how they. To me in Germany, it's very mixed. So on the one hand, people do compliment and they'll go, wow, your German is really good. And oh, I didn't know you weren't German. But I have to say there is also this German element of correctness where they will correct your mistakes without asking, without asking. And it's quite harsh. And you're trying your best and they will switch to English sometimes when you're starting out, which is very frustrating because you're doing your best. And on the one hand, they're trying to help. They're trying to say, hey, look, I speak English. Don't struggle. But it can come across as quite patronising. Give people a chance, support or I don't know, you say dare instead of D and then they will correct you. And you think, oh, I agree. They can be quite sometimes it's not always we have a nice phrase correcting without permission is criticism. And the English are very good at that, being very polite. And I really, yeah, I've always felt like that. Maybe that's a good thing. Again, that's very good about when you work with native people. That's motivating. Yeah. Dave, what's your experience with that? Yeah. My German, I think, is good enough, but everyone can hear I'm English a mile off. As I said, I've come to live with it and I don't worry about it too much. Yeah. Yeah. I just will continue the way I'm going. I don't really have any ambitions to even improve my German anymore, really. But it's good to have obviously the positive feedback is great when you get that. To me, that is about part of authenticity is like you say you accept that and you're OK with your levels good enough. It's good enough for what you need. And that is a part of being authentic is authentic. People think it means being like a native speaker, speaking authentically is like speaking like a native speaker. No, it's not. Authentic is speaking like you is being you in your language. And so if you can do that with the level you have, you don't have to be C1 C2 to be authentic. It makes it easier because, of course, you can express yourself in a different way. But it's acceptance. It's acceptance of this is Spanish, Rebecca. This is I quite like Spanish, Rebecca. I don't like Japanese, Rebecca. Japanese, Rebecca, is really boring because I learned from a business book. I've got zero humour in Japanese. I hate that because I'm also a person I like to laugh. I like to make other people laugh. And I cannot do that in Japanese. I'm just really boring. So I don't feel I do like the language and I like learning, but I don't feel like me at all. Where Spanish is quite good fun because I learned that during a party semester in Spain. Yeah. Good time, girl. It's Spanish. No problem. And in German, I can do everything. I feel like I can cover everything from parties to the tax office. So you've got this different registers. Just one other thing I wanted to bring up. And during my studies, I read a lot of papers on this topic. So it's a topic that's been around for a long time, actually, this linguistics and authenticity. And there are actually studies where they've studied bilinguals and interviewed them, asked them to tell us an emotional story. So there's a woman and she was like Portuguese, French, bilingual, had grown up one place, lived a long time in the other. And when they asked her to tell the story, they say exactly the same story with exactly the same questions in the other language. The interviewer said it was like speaking to a completely different person, the way she expressed herself, the way she spoke, her emotions, her body language. Everything was different, which is really interesting. Yeah. Different personality. I don't know, but I think we have different characteristics, which brings us to the next topic, which is called something called frame switching. So I don't know if you guys have heard of this before. Frame switching is something where you adapt your language to the scenario you're in, which, of course, is like so if you're in a high level business meeting with top people, you don't talk to them the same way you would talk to your buddies at the pub on a Friday night, necessarily. You adapt your language to the scenario. And the same thing exists, you know, foreign languages. So I said, for example, in German, I've become quite direct. That's a case of frame switching is that you adapt to the because the culture here, that's the kind of culture you say what you want. You don't faff about. And that's a case of frame switching. Do you think you do that in English? Or do you think you're more like you adapt to the British culture when you speak English? Do you think you frame switch if you understand what I mean? Yeah, I think I do. Because my husband said that when I am in England, I do much more of the sing sing. Oh, the way you talk, the intonation. Okay. I stress on things. So I wouldn't do that as much. So it sounds a bit exaggerated, maybe to him that he wouldn't do that. I think it's a little bit like mirroring, isn't it? You behave as a crowd behaves. I mean, what happens? And that's probably or maybe the threatening part when you learn a language because you want to do that. Then you have the people looking at you and you're just not able to do it as fast. You feel scared, the emotions come in. And that's the inward, outward problem. Maybe then I don't know. I think I do. And even in Spanish also, try to find the intonation. Mimic. I try to imitate what people do around me, I think. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's important. When I learn a language, I try to imitate body language, intonation. I think that is quite important, I think, to feel more. And then on the other hand, people could say, well, then you're not being authentic if you're normally like this and then you're behaving like that. But you can also say it's a way of building relations with those people. The Germans are really, really direct and you're faffing around going, well, could we maybe perhaps sometimes maybe meet on. Then you don't fit in the group anymore and then you don't feel part of the group because the dynamic is different. It's quite complicated. Yeah. But isn't it like learning a new game? I mean, there's some rules, right? Yeah. Maybe there's some rules to the language, the rule countries function, the rule language works. So if you don't adapt to the rules, say, oh, no, I'm going to talk straightforward. I might not have enjoyed it in England. I don't know, because people might not have understood me. So I might not have let them. Yeah, right. Yeah. I think my example for me is the do and the Z thing in Germany was a big thing. Do you struggle with that, Dave? I've always struggled with the do and the Z because we tend to be more first name basis. So basically everybody would be do like you. I always learn, yeah, Z is for older people and people in authority and stuff. But still sometimes I sometimes struggle or I just forget and I use Z for someone who I should be doodling and they get Rebecca. We are now Purdue and they get really kind of annoyed about it. And I think, yeah, just a language mistake. I'm not trying to say I don't want to be friends with you. I'm just for that second. And I just called you Z. I used the polite you by mistake. And they get really up to you about that sometimes. Also, when you meet someone for the first time, I do not really want to use the Z form. Right. Yeah. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. Who they are, where they're from, the context, the situation. I really don't want to use the Z form. Okay. You have to make a quick decision. Okay. I'll go with the Z and see what happens. But most of the time I'd much prefer to go with the do and things like that. So I think, yeah, that's a big, I've had colleagues who knew each other for many, many years and they still said the Z form. Yeah. I thought that was absolutely ludicrous. I'll get your head around that. Yeah. No, I can't. And I just went in there and said, straight away and no one seemed to worry about it. I'm Dave. Yeah. Yeah. But the others still went with their Z and this is something to this day. I still can't have them. I still can't understand. Yeah. That's a DNA thing. I'd say it's difficult to understand maybe. And we need to get used to, it's the other way around now. When I have a reservation at restaurants now, they don't my surname, even though I send it, I have understood its first names now. Right. You're a bigot. Yeah. Although I have to say on the contrary, I've kind of adopted it in a positive way as well, because I realised like you, Dave, I would always be dudesoning everybody. And I'd be like, I'm Rebecca. Don't call me Frau Deacon. Hated that. Frau Deacon just sounds so like, I don't know. How do you spell that? Yeah. Deacon. They always get my name wrong. And I always used to say, no, I'm Rebecca. I'm dudesoning. I was in a lot of situations where people who I didn't know that well would ask me really personal questions. Things that I used to think, you really shouldn't be asking me that because you don't know me that well. They would ask really private questions. Yeah. Because they were undue. Exactly. And one of my German friends said to me, if you go do, basically it's a free for all. They see that as now we're close friends and I can ask you anything. And I never thought about that before. I wouldn't know. Yeah. And I have to say that I changed my attitude a bit. So now when I feel like, no, you don't need to know my life story. You're going to be Z and I'm going to keep you at Z. Because I don't want to be dudesoning with you. Would you agree, Birgit? Is that true? Yeah, it's true. Because, well, I know that we Germans are very direct. We can be very direct and people tell you what you did wrong and things like that. So if you're on a Z basis, that means you have some distance between you. But as soon as you're on the do, that even gets worse. You can tell them off. I mean, to tell somebody off at a Z level, that's a different one. You get into a personal fight, maybe if you're buddies. I think that's what we feel. There's a difference, as your friend also said. Yeah, which is a good thing. I think when you know that, I think it's actually like borders. Yeah. You appreciate that border. Yeah. Don't cross that border. We're not Purdue. So don't you start asking me questions like that, because exactly we need that. Once a woman once told me I'd coloured my hair and she went, your hair looks like a carrot. Thank you very much. That's a great compliment. What a compliment. Your hair looks like a carrot. And I just thought you really don't know me well enough. I mean, I can laugh about it. It was very red, but it was very orange. But the point is you can't say things like that. You hardly know me. And I just felt like so insulted. But again, we were Purdue. So yeah, it's changed my attitude a bit. Maybe what I've noticed also on that thing is if you say to somebody, how are you? So in British English, maybe American English, it's relatively superficial in the sense of how are you? I'm good. I'm fine. That's it. Like hello. It's like a way to say hello. Yeah. We don't really want to know anything more detailed, but often I have this, I don't know if it's the do or the Z again in German, but whenever you ask somebody in German, it's like they tell you their life story. I don't want to hear that. Sorry. It's good. They get into very medical detail. They love to tell you the medical stories. Yeah. It's so nice if somebody asks you, how are you? They want to tell. We don't do that every day to ask somebody, how are you? Yeah. And of course it's not always superficial in English. Obviously if I'm talking to a friend, I really want to know, how are you? You doing okay? But yeah, this, how are you? Here's my life story. Okay. To the final point, talking about, so how do we support our clients? How do you build authenticity? If you don't feel authentic in your other language, in your second language, it is quite difficult. I think obviously immersion is the best thing. If you can go and live in that country, or of course that's not realistic for a lot of people. I'm never going to go and live in the States. Or I think one of my first points would be, it is important to identify with the culture of the language that you are learning. I find it hard to learn a language if I can't identify with the culture. If I just know zero about this country, the people, the culture, I can't warm to it. And I think you try to learn Chinese and you've never been to China. You don't have any relationship with Chinese people. You're not maybe interested in this culture. You're going to find that I would say very difficult to learn and be authentic. So I think if you're learning English, decide, do you like the Australian English? Do you like the American English? Do you like Irish English, English English? Decide. And kind of so big, it's obviously very related to British English. She loves the British English. She lived in England, so she's kind of got this kind of warm connection. And I think that helps with authenticity when you can sort of, if you can't live there, you could do that. You could watching films, listening to podcasts, learning about the culture, reading books, maybe join a conversation class with and make sure your teacher is from that country. So you get a little bit of an insight. I think that can help. Any other ideas for how to build confidence, build authenticity? I think that's very interesting what you said, this warm up with the country, with the subject, with culture that comes with it, doesn't it? If you weren't interested in Japanese culture or Japanese at all, you wouldn't even start learning Japanese. I mean, the point is that some people need to learn a language, maybe need to learn English and are not so interested. But then, as you said, that might be a good tip. Find a role model, find somebody you like. There's definitely person out there you enjoy watching, listening to, maybe even in the translation. But try, give it a try. Yeah, absolutely. Find out maybe there's something you like about it. Role model, I think, is a brilliant example. Find someone who, well, you listen to them and you think, oh, I would love to talk like that. Or I like the way she or he talks. I like the way they explain things. I like their mannerisms. And role models, I think, can be really, really. And again, that's YouTube, going onto YouTube, watching films, relating to that is a good idea. Dave, any thoughts on building the authentic you, the authentic English you or authentic German you? No, I think, as you said, it's just feeling at ease with the culture. I know, or I sense that a lot of learners don't have this connection to English or England or America or whatever it might be. They kind of separate the two. So even if I bring in sort of cultural things, or even talking about, because I'm a big sports fan, for example, different types of sports, especially if you're going into Ireland with the Gaelic sports or mention cricket or rugby, it's like, oh, there's an interest there. Why are we talking about this? What's this got to do with English? And then I think, well, okay, yeah, but it is connected to English. And if you go and live in England or Ireland or wherever, you will be confronted by that for sure. And you might like it. Who knows? And also it's a small talk topic, you know? If you meet British people, then maybe they're interested in cricket. I mean, I'm not interested in cricket, but maybe they're interested in cricket or rugby. It's like carnival. Even if you don't love carnival, if you come to Germany, you have to know what it is, what it's all about and have a little bit of connection to it, even if you don't like it. I think it's important to know what it is, to really understand where it's coming from, right? Did you want to say something about levels or confidence? Yes, I wanted to talk about when is the point where people notice progress and differences? Obviously, when they come to us and have a coaching or training with us, they want to improve. Some people stay for a short time. Some people keep on learning. And when's the point when they can say, now it's enough? You said that before. You're good enough. When is the point they can decide, I have changed now. I feel better. Sometimes that's what I notice. And this is why it comes into this episode. It's a mindset of thing. So there's obviously an active step you need to do to realise, okay, I'm making progress. So I've changed. I feel better now. It's easier for me to remember words. Maybe I have understood how English people, American people tick. I can connect better to this. And this is what sometimes I need to speak out to them and say, okay, I think your level is good now. So how do you feel about it? And then I say, oh, I'm a learner. They say, oh, yeah, yeah. But maybe you can now say, I'm an English speaker. I use English and I'm good enough and I'm not bad. I know the rules. I've learned a lot about this and that. This is a kind of mindset. Sometimes it seems to stay forever in the minds of people. They feel like I'm not good enough. They've told themselves so often. So that's like negative affirmations. Well, think about some positive affirmations, maybe not after the first lesson, but maybe after three months, four, five, six months. And again, it goes back to this acceptance, accepting. Yeah. Realistic. Look at it. Yeah. My final point for authenticity would also be this forgetting perfectionism. I have a lot of clients who will confess I'm a perfectionist. I'm a perfectionist. Yeah. 120%. Yeah. Yeah. And if that's your target in a language, you are never going to be perfect. You're just not. The day you accept that is the day that you can be fine with where you are and feel authentic. Feel comfortable like this is me. This is German Dave or English Rebecca or Spanish Rebecca, whatever. This is how I communicate. And I'm happy with this. I'm comfortable with it. And maybe it's not perfect, but it's okay. And I found my voice. I think this is the point. You're finding your voice in a language and it doesn't have to be perfect. It has to feel good and comfortable. And of course, improving your language, learning more vocabulary, learning grammar structures, all of this helps you feel more comfortable because you've got the tools. But it's also this mindset of like Birgit says, all this negative affirmations. Oh, I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. It's just such a barrier to improving your English. Yeah. And also we need to accept that it's hard sometimes. It is hard if you speak like a full day English, a weekend of English. And when we met in Valencia, we realised after what we spoke English only, I think we could have spoken German. We didn't do, I don't know. I didn't get to know your German personality that much. Maybe better. We didn't decide on that. It was just, and I felt after you asked me, is it difficult for you? And I realised, oh yeah, I feel a little tired. Yeah. I noticed we went back to the hotel and I did think, oh, poor Birgit, she's been, bless her, she's been doing this all weekend. And I was, we were all exhausted. And I thought, oh, poor Birgit, she's had to do this all weekend. I didn't even think about it because. Yeah. You didn't even think about it. That's the point. I'm sure I made mistakes. Yeah. I'm sure I did. I didn't notice that. I just suddenly realised, wow, that's pretty exhausting. And that's the point that it can be hard and you can accept it. And if I hadn't been willing to do it, I would have asked you, can we please change or can we speak German for a while? Yeah. That's okay. Okay. So on this topic, I have the golden nugget for today. This is connected to positive psychology. If you're interested in this, I'm going to give you a link. The link is viacharacter.org. We'll put the link in the show notes. So it's V I A character, the word character.org. This is a big positive psychology site and you can go there and you can take a survey. It's completely free. You do have to register. You have to give your email, but you don't have to pay. There is a paid version. Just do the free version. And you answer lots and lots of questions. And at the end, you get a report about your personal.