Recently, I have had a lot of students for interview support for various different programs. A lot of these students have told me similar things, like that they are not confident in their English, and one thing that many of them have told me is that it has been some time since they last practiced speaking in English. There are some things that I do that have helped me to learn, and while I have written about this topic before several times, these things are always relevant and always will be, so I’d like to talk about them again today.

The first thing that I want to talk about today is confidence. Many of my students have recently told me that they lack confidence in their ability to speak. For the purpose of admissions interviews, or any interviews, for that matter, being able to express yourself confidently is an extremely important skill that you must be capable of doing. Having confidence does several things for you; it makes you sound more confident, which in turn makes you sound more convincing, it makes you feel more comfortable in the interview, and it also can have an effect on how well you do in the interview. If you are not confident about yourself or what you are saying, it’s possible that you might be worrying about how the interview is going, which could then affect the quality of your answers. I myself have a large degree of confidence in my ability to use Japanese, even though I know I am not perfect and that I do still sometimes make mistakes.

Making mistakes is one of the reasons that I think students are not confident in themselves. Although it depends on the individual, I think it’s entirely possible that someone who is afraid of making mistakes will be hesitant to try to use their skills because of this fear. What I have found to work for me is to stop worrying about if I make mistakes because I can identify those mistakes and fix them, either immediately or in the future if I am not entirely certain of what the correct way to say something is. This also helps me feel more confident, as I don’t really worry about making mistakes, as I know that I can fix any mistakes when I make them and learn how to properly say what I want or need to say. Making mistakes in an interview is obviously not recommended, so be sure to practice saying what you want to say in advance.

These are just some of the things that I have told my students recently. I think that these things, along with practice in general, will make it much easier to achieve confidence and fluency.