The confidence of speaking English
Written by Zsofia Pioker
AERO Friedrichshafen is a yearly get together of the General Aviation industry, the strongest European show of its kind. It brings together global leaders of the industry to meet their teams, to network with business partners and to give interviews to international media.
People at the show talk publicly or in meeting rooms, chat in hallways, present on stage, gossip and joke at happy hour informal events, mainly in English. For a lot of us, English is a second language. We try to prepare for these exchanges, meetings and interviews by using internal briefings and available information, we ask ChatGPT and take all possible help. However, one thing is sure, we can’t avoid talking using our own words. It’s a challenge for us, non-native speakers, to remain confident and convincing when talking to native speakers. Questions such as “Do I express myself correctly?” or “What will people think of my accent?” emerge and block our brains in critical situations when we rehearsed the situation so well.
If we listen to every conversation happening in the world, only 4 % of the conversations involve native speakers. The rest involves at least one non-native speaker. However, non-native speakers will always have doubts about their capabilities.
I thought about this, and I wrote down my related takeaways from AERO 2025. I’d like to share these with my fellow speakers from all around the world who use English as a second language :
We speak their language. With other words, we studied it long and we are making an effort to talk to the native speakers in their language.
Our accent is part of our integrity, it belongs to our personality. Talking with an accent is what makes us unique and real.
Native English (or any other language) speakers speak their own language perfectly, which makes them capable to understand us even when we make mistakes.
Rehearsing might work as a roadblock whereas speaking spontaneously can flow perfectly.
Even better: I feel that in certain situations, non-native speakers understand each other better than a native a non-native. Just because both of us speak English as a second language, our brains actually process the incoming information similarly and we interpret meanings in a broader sense than native speakers. So, non-native speakers might actually be able to communicate better. 😉
So, let’s try and get rid of our inhibitions and be proud of our achievements of learning foreign languages.