I'm scared I’ll forget my words

Georgie Have you ever been speaking English, and suddenly you forget a word?
Elizabeth I forgot, I forget the word when I try to speak. For a moment my mind is blank.
Miguel I know what I want to say, but no words come to mind. It's like my mind just shuts down.
Alissa Melinger The bilingual faces a big challenge in that they have double of everything.
Hanan In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to avoid panicking when things go wrong
speaking English.
Georgie Hello and welcome to Beating Speaking Anxiety, the podcast to help you fight your fears of
speaking English. I'm Georgie, an English teacher and presenter at BBC Learning English.
Hanan And I'm Hanan, a bilingual reporter for BBC Arabic and presenter of the Arabic educational
series, Dars.
Georgie You can find a transcript for this episode and other resources to help you on our website,
[Link].
Hanan We heard at the start of the programme about that terrifying feeling when you forget your words
when you're speaking a new language. Has that ever happened to you, Georgie?
Georgie Oh, so many times. It happened all the time when I was learning Spanish. Your mind goes blank.
There's an awkward pause, that makes you stressed, and then it's even harder to remember the word. It's a
vicious cycle.
And this is very common when you're using a second language. Even if you feel like you know lots of
vocabulary. We spoke to Maria from Ukraine, who finds her mind goes blank when speaking English.
Maria I noticed that I forgot even simple words, because for me, it's easier to have a conversation with a
difficult topic connected with water supply, with some political situation.
Hanan Maria can have a conversation about complicated things, like politics. But she finds it harder to
remember words for everyday situations.
Maria But when I need to ask something really simple, for example, in a bus or trying to find some
place, I'm completely lost and frustrated. I don't know why.
Georgie It's not that Maria doesn't know the words for these situations, but in the moment she finds it
difficult to remember them. So why does this happen? Well, to answer that question, we need to
understand what's happening in our brains when we learn a new language.
Alissa Melinger So when you're first learning a language, you're doing a lot of really conscious activity
that you don't do when you're speaking your native language.
Georgie This is Alissa Melinger, a professor at the University of Dundee. Alissa researches the way we
choose our words when we're speaking, and she says that speaking a new language requires conscious
activity. That means your brain has to think Beating Speaking Anxiety ©British Broadcasting
Corporation 2026 [Link] Page 3 of 6 things through with a lot of effort, rather than
doing things automatically, like you would when you speak your first language.
Alissa Melinger Consciously thinking, 'This word first, then that word, now I have to put this other word
that I wouldn't normally put here, but this is where it goes, I must remember that this is where it goes'. So
you're doing a lot of kind of very explicit thinking.
Hanan Alissa says that because your brain is doing all this work, it can struggle to reach the final step of
finding a specific word to say, even if it’s a word you know.
Alissa Melinger It could be, it could be a sort of processing overload that you, you can't find the word
because you spent so much energy trying to remember what order the words are supposed to go in.
Georgie Alissa calls this situation 'a processing overload'. Your brain is trying to do too much at once.
And she says it can be a particular problem in the early stages of learning a language.
Alissa Melinger You think like you go on holiday and you think, 'Right, I need to learn how to say
please, I need to learn how to say thank you, I need to learn how to, you know, ask for the bill'. You're not
really learning those words or learning that language, you're just memorising sort of sounds.
Hanan When you only know words as a translation of your native language and you haven't used them,
they're much harder for your brain to find in that stressful moment where you need to order a coffee or
ask directions.
Alissa Melinger Those words that you're learning, they don't have their own kind of meanings. They're
not grounded in your experience of having used them. You can fail to access them because they were only
sort of, they were never very strongly represented in the first place.
Georgie And so for Maria, who we heard from at the start of the programme, her problem remembering
simple words could be because she hasn't used them enough. But as we know, advanced learners often
forget words too. According to Alissa, this could just be a part of being bilingual, which is how we
describe someone who can speak two languages.
Alissa Melinger The bilingual faces a big challenge in that they have double of everything. So they have
double the, the vocabulary.
Hanan When you're switching between two languages, you are probably using the words in both
languages less frequently. As we know, if you use words less, they are harder for your brain to remember
when you're speaking.
Alissa Melinger One explanation is that the two languages are competing with one another, and so that
just introduces uncertainty or interference in the processing and makes it harder for you to, to, to
eventually find the sounds that you're looking for. Alternatively, it's because for any bilingual, you're
using each language half as much as a monolingual would use their single language, so all your
representations are sort of weaker.
Georgie Hearing from Alissa, it makes me realise how amazing our brains are and how hard they have to
work when we speak a different language.
Hanan Yes, and it sounds like things can get easier the more you practise speaking and using the words
you learn – the words become more accessible the more you use them.
Georgie Yeah, exactly. But as Alissa says, even fluent bilinguals forget words. It's just part of holding
two languages in your head. So we need to have some ideas for what to do when this happens.
Hanan Yes, Georgie, do you have any tips?
 Georgie I think the best way is to find a way to describe that word. So if you can't remember the word
'table', for example, you can say something like 'It's something we eat food off, it's flat and has four legs'.
Then the other person can guess the word and you can continue with your conversation, so the idea is to
not get stuck. But if you really do want to find that specific word, learn some what we call 'buying time
phrases'. For example, 'Sorry, I can't think of the word – just bear with me' or 'My mind has gone blank –
just give me a second'.
Hanan I love that and do you remember, Georgie, we have some tips from last week that you, feel free to
be vulnerable, make a joke out of it, share your embarrassment and you know the other person will
probably help you.
Georgie Yeah, people are kinder than we think sometimes.
Hanan That's it for this episode of Beating Speaking Anxiety. Find the video with more tips to help you
with your anxiety on our website, visit [Link].
Georgie Next up in this series: What to do when you don't understand the other person in the
conversation. Goodbye for now.
Hanan Bye bye.