Learn Australian English in this episode of The Aussie English Podcast where Ii talk about how you can build English-speaking confidence. Subscribe to the podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS Download MP3 + Transcript AE 504: How to IMPROVE Your English-Speaking Confidence! All righty guys, it looks like summer has arrived! It is a hot one, actually. Need to wind down the windows and let the hot air of the car out because it’s boiling inside here, but yeah back in Ocean Grove. Living with the folks at the moment for the next few months as we get settled and get organised and yeah, I’m enjoying being back. Canberra was good, Canberra was good, but I definitely know how it feels now to be away from family and friends, you know, it wasn’t the same experience as I’m sure a lot of you guys have gone through with regards to moving, moving abroad, moving overseas and having to live away from friends and family and effectively start again, but I definitely felt that to some extent as I knew absolutely no one in Canberra. Actually, that’s a lie. I knew one person who I saw once, two people two people. I lie. I lie. I knew two people, but I wasn’t very close friends with those people. So, I had to sort of kindle those relationships and become closer with them, but yeah. It was difficult not being near family or anything like that the entire time, that was, that was quite hard so, I can appreciate what it’s like guys moving away for substantial amounts of time and having to restart your life because at the time we thought we were going to be there for two years, but only ended up being there for about six months fortunately or unfortunately. Just going to straighten this camera. Anyway, today I wanted to chat about confidence and building confidence when speaking English or when wanting to learn English because I had a lesson recently with one of my students and he had some difficulties at work so, I might tell you his story because I won’t mention his name, but he had been hired for a job and after a few months they had decided to let him go because they decided that they didn’t have the money to have him on board at his experience level and not have someone with more experience to help train him up so effectively they needed someone with more experience and they only had enough money to hire one person. So, they decided they had to let him go but in the process of letting him go they had made him do a few exercises and like presentations to try and test whether he was going to be good enough for that position. So, I was helping him prepare for one of the talks that he had to give in order to try and, I guess, show confidence when he’s speaking when he’s presenting in English and, hopefully, keep his job. But he lost it, unfortunately, because they had already decided that they needed someone more experienced, with more experience. I guess the good thing was though that he has grown a lot through that experience and he had to obviously work through some very tough situations and practice his English and presenting skills. But the funny thing is with with this guy he speaks really well. He speaks really well, but he lacks the confidence because of these things that he’s gone through so...