200 Days of Practice. I Still Went Blank at the Interview. | 36-Minute English Podcast (B2-C1)

For 200 days before her move to Vienna, Claire practiced German every morning and marked each day with a red cross on a paper calendar in her kitchen. Every one of those mornings she said the same answer out loud to her kettle: tell me about your last job. At the interview, at a small publisher of travel guides, the editor asked exactly that question. Two perfect sentences in, he nodded and picked up his pen, and the rest of the answer vanished. So she did the only thing she had practiced, and started again from the first word. He looked up and said, very politely, yes, you said that. A week later the rejection email said she was clearly very well prepared. This episode is about why rehearsing an answer from start to finish turns it into a recording that only plays from the beginning, and the fifteen re-entry lines that bring you back into an answer that breaks in the middle, for five breaks: losing the thread, losing a word, being interrupted, taking a wrong turn, and an ending that will not come. THE 15 LINES IN THIS EPISODE - "Let me back up a step." - "The point I'm making is this." - "To finish that thought." - "The exact term escapes me." - "Let me put it in simpler terms." - "Roughly speaking, it's this." - "Can I finish this part first?" - ...and 8 more, all said out loud in the episode. Every one is said slowly, repeated more than once, and then used in a real situation, so you can say it out loud with us instead of only recognizing it. The Fluency Plateau is for people who already understand English but freeze when it is time to speak. Each episode takes one exact moment where you get stuck and hands you the lines that get you past it. SPEAKING CHALLENGE Which of the five breaks happened to you most recently? Say your answer out loud before you write it. #EnglishPodcast #EnglishConversation #SpeakEnglish #EnglishFluency