Learning a Second Language can be challenging and frightening.
English is spoken by people of all nationalities and there are many native English accents. Sounding native is less about grammar than it is about practice. In my humble opinion, it is more important to become fluent and to properly enunciate the words spoken so that it is easily understood than it is to have a ‘native’ accent. Practice is the only way to get there.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest impediments to practicing and gaining fluency of a language is shyness. This entire notion is based on the fear that someone will think lesser of us because we have an accent or our grammar is a little off or we don’t know enough words to get our point across. The good news is that most people are more flattered than annoyed if we try to speak their primary language.
Reading this next little fact, that you will intuitively know to be true, will instantly give you a great deal of confidence! For most of us learning English, the one thing we often forget to take into consideration is that English is not our first language! The fact is that a very small fraction of people in the world are able to speak a second language and certainly fewer are able to speak it as well as we speak English, our second or third language.
So, when speaking, listening, reading or writing in English, do it with pride and a smile!