You've studied English for years. You've practiced English for years. Yet, you still freeze when you go to speak English. You still feel nervous. You still have beads of sweat coming down your face or it seems like when you go to try to speak English. Why does this happen? Are you ready? Well, then let's jump right in. Reason number one why you freeze when you speak English. Because your brain switches into survival mode the moment someone is watching. You see, when you feel pressure like an interview or a presentation or even a simple question, your amygdala fires a threat signal and your brain trying to protect you pulls resources away from the language centers

you need. You see, it's not weakness because you're intelligent. You're amazing. It's not weakness. It's actually biology doing exactly what it was designed to do. Your brain is trying to protect you. Your brain is going into survival mode. What does this actually look like? Let's look at the breakdown. Here's the trigger. The moment you feel pressure, like someone waiting for you to speak, you're in a conversation, they ask you a question, and then they stop

and look at you, waiting for you to give an answer. There's a tiny part of your brain called the amygdala. This is your brain's alarm system. It starts to send out an emergency signal. What does this look like? You're in this conversation. The person is looking at you waiting for you to give an answer and your brain realizes, okay, we feel your body language is changing and your brain starts sending out this emergency signal. Hey, something's wrong. This individual is stressed. We need to protect her. And all of a sudden it goes into protection mode. But protection mode inhibits you from accessing the English in your brain. You need to speak, but you can't because your brain

is now saying, "Hey, this is a dangerous situation. Let's protect him. Let's protect her." You see, it decides that speaking English in front of someone is a threat, just like danger would be. So, every time you're in this situation, your brain says, "Nope, we're freezing. We're shutting down. This is not a safe environment. Speaking English, nope. Something about this is not good." So your brain says no, it's not going to let you access the English. This is the trigger that happens in your brain. So how can you avoid this? How can you stop freezing? How can you finally stop your

brain from going into survival mode? Here is the solution. You have to create low pressure speaking moments every day. Remember what we just saw was a situation where the brain says this is dangerous. You need to create moments that are not dangerous. You see, the more your brain experiences speaking English without anything bad happening, the less it treats speaking as a threat. So, you're going to start with tiny zero stakes moments. For example, ordering coffee in English. talking to yourself in English, leaving yourself a voice memo in

English. Each safespeaking moment builds new evidence that English conversations are not dangerous. So instead of your brain saying, "Oh no, English is on the don't do list, the absolutely avoid list," now your brain has different experiences to feed off of. You're going to get your coffee. Maybe you like to go to Starbucks and in order to get your coffee, you actually have to speak in English, but you're not stressed. So, you ask for the coffee and now all of a sudden the alarm bells are gone. English is now safe. So, instead of the danger, now there is the proceed forward. go like a light. Hey, this is a good situation. Now, English is actually

something positive and not negative. So, it's important once again to practice in low pressure speaking environments or creating these moments. Here's reason number two why you freeze when you speak English. Speaking asks your brain to do six things at once and it drops everything. It's overloading your brain. You see, while you speak, your brain is finding words, building grammar, monitoring pronunciation, tracking the listener's face, managing your emotions, and planning your next sentence, all simultaneously. You're asking your brain to do all of these things at the same time. Working memory has a limit. So when that limit is hit, the whole system stalls. The

freeze is not failure. It's just overload. I need you to remember this. The freeze is not failure. You are intelligent. Your brain is amazing. It's just being overloaded. So, let me break this down even more. You see, the second you start speaking English, your brain tries to juggle many tasks at the exact same time. Finding words, building sentences, checking pronunciation, watching the listener, managing nerves, and planning what comes next. Let me show you this visually. So again, your brain, an amazing brain, you are an amazing individual. Let's imagine this is your brain, okay? And when you go to speak, you're asking your brain to do many different things, but we have

six things that we are specifically asking your brain to do. You want your brain to do these things. Here we have six things right here. You want your brain to find words, build sentences. Let's write this down. Find words. You want it to build sentences. This is all happening at the same time. Then you want it to check pronunciation and watch the listener, their body language. So check pronunciation. Then you're looking at body language. Is the person enjoying talking to you? Looking at body language. Then on top of that, you're also managing your nerves. Are you nervous?

You're trying to stay calm. Managing your nerves and planning what comes next. So, you're managing your nerves, trying to not be nervous, and you're planning what comes next. All of this is happening at the same time. Your brain is being overloaded. There's so much happening and your brain gets full. This is why speaking asking your brain to do six things leads to it dropping everything. So what's the solution? Because these things are important. What's the solution? How can you stop the overload? Here is the solution. Practice speaking on topics you already know deeply, things that you already have stored information in your brain about. So when the subject is familiar,

your brain spends less working memory on finding ideas, which frees up space for the language itself. So, picking three topics. This is our focus. Pick three topics you know extremely well in your native language. So, now we're going to have your brain focused on topics you know well. So, now we have your brain again. Let's say now you're focusing on three topics. So we have topic number one, topic number two and topic number three. Now these are topics that you are already very familiar with in your own language. So in your brain you already have areas where information related to these topic actually live. You already have the information in your brain. So you have

these three topics and you're going to practice speaking about only those topics in English until the words flow more easily. You see, familiarity with the content reduces the overall cognitive load. So, you'll no longer experience this cognitive overload. Why? Because you're speaking about topics you are familiar with. So, again, you're going to focus on speaking about topics that you are familiar with. This is now your goal and this will help you avoid that cognitive overload again. Finally, stop freezing when you speak English. Here's reason number three. Stress hormones literally block the part of your brain that stores vocabulary. So when cortisol floods your

system under pressure, it impairs the hippocampus, the brain region most involved in retrieving words and language memories. This is why you can remember a word perfectly at home and then completely go blank the moment you're in a highstakes conversation. It's chemistry, not capability. Again, you are intelligent. You're smart. This is just the way your body is made up. So, let's break this down a little bit more. Here's the breakdown. When you feel nervous or under pressure, your body releases a chemical called cortisol, your stress hormone. And a little cortisol is helpful, but too much of it, too fast, causes problems in your brain. So, let's see this visually. So,

I want you to think about this again. You're in a situation, a stressfree situation. So we have a stressfree You can think clearly. There are no problems at all. Everything is going well. Stressfree meaning you can speak without any issues. no problems at all. And then we have a situation where stress is at its height. Again, you're speaking with someone and you get nervous. You see, what happens is when you get nervous, that stress hormone is released and it actually causes you to freeze up, but it's going all throughout. And this stops your brain from working properly because the stress is so high. This is what happens when you freeze. You have the information inside, but you're so

stressed you tense up. How can you solve this? Here is the solution for this issue. Practice retrieving words under mild pressure. Remember, we looked at situations where the pressure is at its height. You're completely stressed. But no, what you want to do is practice retrieving words under mild pressure. So the hippocampus gets better at working under stress when it has been trained to do so gradually. It's like an athlete training to prepare for a race. There has to be some level of stress in order to prepare that athlete for the actual high stress situation. So let's look at it like this. When you're at home, you're practicing in different situations, right?

Well, go out and be in a situation where instead of let's say 10 people, there are three people. Yes, this is kind of stressful, but not as stressful as the previous situation we were talking about where it the stress is very high. So, you have to practice. Okay, even though I'm a little stressed, I can still get some words out. Then you need to practice in another situation where the stress levels go just a bit higher. Maybe you have to give a presentation and there are many more people watching you. But you have to practice and each time you're increasing your stress level. So here's another way of doing this. Create a low pressure environment, low level

for yourself at home. Set a timer for 60 seconds and talk about a topic without stopping. So you have your timer and you're going to set it for 60 seconds. Now this 60second period is going to be the amount of time that you have to speak. You have to speak for that 60second period remember about a topic that you enjoy. But you must keep talking. This 60-second timer is creating that level of pressure you need to practice under. You see, the mild pressure trains your brain to retrieve words even when cortisol is present. So real conversations feel less overwhelming over time. This is a

powerful practice you can do at home. So again, practice retrieving words under mild pressure. Here is reason number four why you freeze when you speak English. You're watching yourself speak and that self-monitoring is actually what trips you up. You see, research calls it monitor hypothesis. When you pay too much attention to whether you're speaking correctly, you interrupt your own fluency. It's the same reason a tight rope walker falls the moment they look down. The self-consciousness itself becomes the obstacle, not your actual ability.

Again, I'm continuing to emphasize this. You are intelligent. It's not about your ability. It's about breaking these habits. So, what does this look like? Let's kind of break this down a little bit more. As you speak, a part of your brain becomes a critic, listening to every word you say and checking it against the grammar rules you've learned. This is called the monitor. It's the voice in your head saying, "Wait, is that right?" So, while you're speaking, you're in this conversation with another individual. You're having a conversation, and the conversation is it's going okay. But as you're speaking to the individual,

there's something happening in your head. Now, the individual is listening to you and does not know what's going on in your head, but there's this little person and the person has what seems to be a clipboard in your brain and the person is checking, hey, was that right? I don't know if that was right or not. So, as you're speaking, this monitor continues to check everything that you're saying. And this actually causes you to freeze up. So how can you solve this? How can

you remove this from your mind? Here is the solution. Practice speaking without stopping to correct yourself. Just speak. Don't stop. Don't worry about the critic. Just keep speaking. You see, at home, I want you to record yourself. You can use your phone if you'd like to record yourself speaking for two minutes on any topic. So again, here are the parameters. you're at home and you want to set a timer. And this timer is going to be for two minutes. For this twominut period, you are going to speak without stopping. You can pick the topic, but you're going to speak without stopping. And that inner critic that was there before with the clipboard,

you're going to tell that inner critic to leave. Just keep speaking. Don't stop. Don't worry about making mistakes. Just keep speaking. Now, the rule, no stopping, no correcting, and no starting over. Keep going. No matter what comes out, do this daily. You see, over time, this trains your brain to let speech just flow without waiting for the monitor's approval, which is exactly the skill fluent speaking requires. Ignore the monitor and just simply speak. This is how you will improve.

What about reason number five? Why you freeze when you speak English? Reason number five is in English, you feel like a younger, smaller version of yourself and that person is scared. Again, I have been through this. I speak Korean and I remember when I was learning Korean, all of these emotions I would freeze when I was trying to speak. So, I understand what you're going through. You see, in your native language, you're an adult. You're competent. You're articulate. You're funny. But in English, limited vocabulary forces you into simpler thoughts and simpler expressions. That emotional gap between you, who you are, and who you sound like

creates a kind of shame and it makes you want to stay quiet rather than reveal the gap. You don't want to show the gap. So, let me break this down even more. You see, in your native language, you have decades of practice expressing exactly who you are, your humor, your intelligence, your personality. But in English, it's different. So, we have two individuals that we're talking about. They're both you. The first individual again is you based on your native language. You have a solid foundation because you have years upon years and decades of learning and practicing in your own language. Your native language helps you

to shine. You know how to express yourself clearly. You can shine when you're speaking in your native language. But then we have the other side, English. In English, your limited vocabulary forces you to express much simpler versions of your thoughts. You feel the gap between who you are and who you sound like. And this is where it gets very frustrating because you freeze a lot more. So, your foundation is not as solid. It's a bit broken. Your steps are not as full because you don't have as much information in English as you do in your native language. So, you're not able to shine as much when you speak English. So, how do we solve this? How can you finally stop feeling

like this younger, smaller version of yourself? Now, before I give you the solution, I do want to remind you that you are, say it with me, intelligent. Don't feel bad. You just need to learn how to overcome this. Here's the solution. The solution is find the English words for the topics that define you. You see, you feel most like yourself when talking about things you care about deeply. Pick two or three topics that are central to who you are. Let me show you what this would look like. So, what you're going to do is we're going to build you up. You're going to pick two to three topics.

Let's say this one topic is right here. A topic that you are very knowledgeable on. Pick two to three topics. This is topic one right here. And this is topic number two. You're picking two topics and you're going to it can be about your work, your passions, your opinions. You're going to learn the specific vocabulary for those topics in English. So now you're picking vocabulary.

You're picking expressions related to these topics. And what's going to happen? Your foundation in English is going to start to get stronger. You see, when you can express the things that matter most to you, the gap between who you are and who you would or who you sound like begins to close. Now, what's going to happen? Your light is going to start shining brighter. Why? Because you're building on things you actually know. Find the English words for the topics that define you. Now, before we get to our sixth reason, I want to tell you that this lesson is being brought to you by my app, the English with Tiffany app. Why is this important? The app is free to

download, but the app continues with my passion of helping English learners around the world just like you. So, the app has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of students. And I want to show you each month I add a brand new course specifically for immigrants living in America. But there are many courses. So, even if you're not an immigrant, for example, each week we upload lessons connected to these YouTube lessons, and you can go and find them. For example, weekly English fluency lessons. If you click there, you'll find tons of lessons, for example, from last year in 2025. You hit the lesson and you can watch the video, you can practice, and you can continue

improving your English. This app will help you. You always have your phone with you. You can even learn more, for example, about various topics. We're learning about how to help you stop freezing where there's a topical English section. You hit that and there are topics listed. For example, technology. You'll learn vocabulary words, expressions, and different conversational dialogues you can practice related to the topics. So, you can download the app totally for free. Again, this app will help you improve your English. It is my way of helping you and many other English learners. So download the app totally for free.

There's a premium section that if you'd like to become a premium member, you can. But even if you don't, you can download it for free and continue improving your English. My goal as your English teacher is to help you move forward on your English journey and remind you always that you are intelligent. So you ready to go to the next reason? Let's continue. Now our next reason is reason number six. Your brain is convinced you'll be rejected if you make a mistake. And rejection is a survival threat. You see, the brain processes social rejection using the same neural pathways as physical pain. When you fear judgment for your English, your brain isn't being dramatic. It's

running an ancient safety program. The freeze response is your nervous system trying to protect you from what it perceives as genuine danger. Let's break this down even more. So, when you worry that someone will judge your English, your brain treats that fear like a physical danger. So, for example, if you're having a conversation with someone, you're in the midst of a conversation and the person has just finished speaking and now that person is waiting for you to speak. They're looking at you. They're ready for you to respond. But as they're looking at you, as they're waiting for you to respond, there's a signal that's being sent out and your brain is saying, "Hey, I don't

know why, but it feels like danger. Something is happening. We need to protect ourselves." There's this danger signal that goes out and you start to freeze. You see, this isn't an exaggeration. Being judged or left out by others activates the exact same area of the brain as physical pain. So when you're in this situation, and it happens many times when there are several people waiting for you to give a response. Remember, I've had this happen to me before, that signal continues to go off because everyone is waiting on you.

Everyone is wondering, "Hey, are you going to say anything? What are you doing?" And that signal is danger, danger, danger. There's an issue. So, how do you stop that trigger? How can you stop feeling like, "Oh, if I make a mistake, they won't want to talk to me anymore." Here's the solution. The solution is speak first in safe relationships. Think about those relationships you have where the person you're speaking to, the friend, makes you feel safe. So the fear of rejection is lowest with people you already trust. So I want you to think about those individuals and again this

has happened to me before as well. I knew people who made me feel comfortable. So think about those individuals. The individuals who when you're with them make you feel like you can accomplish anything. These individuals can be your safe zone. When you're with these individuals, you feel completely safe. And when you feel safe, you will speak without being nervous. So the fear of rejection is lowest with people you already trust. Identify one or two people in your life, a friend, a colleague, a family member with whom you feel completely safe. Practice speaking English with them first and only. Build your evidence of safety in lowrisk

relationships before expanding to higher stakes ones. So you're in this safe environment. Speak with these individuals as much as possible. What's going to happen? You're going to build your confidence. You're going to build your feelings of safety. And this will affect you as you move to other conversations. So speak first in safe relationships. This leads us to reason number seven why you freeze when you speak English. Every time you stayed silent to avoid a mistake, you taught your brain that silence is the right answer. You see, avoidance is self- reinforcing. Each

time you chose not to speak to protect yourself from embarrassment, your brain registered, "Oh, silence worked. Nothing bad happened." Over hundreds of avoided moments, silence becomes the default response. The freeze isn't a failure of willpower. It's a deeply practiced habit. And I feel like I am speaking directly to myself because literally I did this. This was me so many times when I was studying and learning Korean. I would just be silent because I was nervous and I would freeze and it would be my default. Just be silent, smile, and let the other person speak. So what really triggers this? Let's break this down. Every time you felt the urge to speak but chose silence instead, your

brain noticed what happened next. Nothing. Nothing bad happened next. So, when you were in a situation and you had two decisions, you're in a situation and there are people waiting to hear from you or you're in conversations and you're a little bit nervous, but you have two choices. You can either speak and possibly make a mistake, maybe feel nervous, or you can say nothing. And when you choose to say nothing, what's the result? Nothing bad happens. You are safe. But on the opposite side, if you choose to speak, there's this nervousness. So you feel like, oh, it could be danger on this side, but if I simply stay quiet, I will be safe. So your brain says, okay,

this is what we're going to choose each time, just to be silent and protect ourselves. No embarrassment, no judgment, no discomfort. Your brain filed that away as, "Hey, this is a successful strategy. You're safe. Let's do this each and every time." But this is not what you need to do. If you want to stop freezing, you need to speak. So, how can you do this? Here's the solution. Track your speaking moments, not your mistakes. You see, your brain has been tracking silence as success for years.

It's been looking at your silence like, "Yep, we were silent yesterday. Check. Good job." "You were silent two days ago and everything was fine. Check. Good job." "You were silent three weeks ago and nothing happened. Check. Good job." You need to stop checking off when you were silent. Flip the metric. Instead, at the end of each day, count how many times you spoke English. Not how correctly, not how fluently, just how many times. So, you're going to take out of your notebook and you're going to write down or you can have it on your phone, but just have a checklist. Let's say today is let's do Sunday. Let's say today is Sunday and you go home and you're trying to see how many times

did I speak English? Question is, how many times? Oh, at the coffee shop. One What's the second one? Oh, in class, write down how many times you actually spoke English. These become your metric for winning, your metric for seeing if you are improving. You see, write the number down. When your brain starts measuring success by speaking rather than by silence, the habit begins to shift from the inside out. Track your speaking moments, not your mistakes.