Two weeks ago I taught a low-intermediate Spanish class. One of the students in the class freezes up a lot when speaking.
It was an obstacle that holds her back from even wanting to speak. I actually think she has conversational fluency already, but she disagrees because of how self-conscious she feels and how often she freezes.
I gave her a quick tip to get unstuck: speak using the infinitive when you’re in doubt.
I got this tip from Benny Lewis. I told my student that if she can’t remember the conjugation of a verb, say the unconjugated form. People will still understand the sentence. It won’t be grammatically correct, but it’s way better than freezing up. Best of all, anyone who knows anything about Spanish grammar knows the infinitive form of a verb. It’s common knowledge, making this an incredibly simple fix to implement.
Now she has a simple tool to keep conversations flowing instead of freezing. It is working for her.
Here are some other simple tips to avoid freezing up:
Learn to say “um” in your target language. In Spanish, the word is “eh.” Instead of freezing up, say a long, drawn out “eeeehhhh”
Learn other words/phrases that buy you time. My favourite in Spanish is ¿cómo? (pardon) because it makes the native speaker repeat their sentence, buying you more time to reply
The most important point to stop freezing up: say what you can, not what you want.
This is especially important for beginners and intermediate learners. At those levels, odds are that you frequently won’t have the vocabulary or grammar knowledge to say what you want to say. Therefore, when you get stuck focus on what you can say and not what you want to say. It fosters smoother conversations and will get you unstuck.
Thanks for reading this! Contact me if you have any questions or if you want to take free/discounted lessons to test out a new accelerated learning program I’m developing for beginner French and Spanish learners.