Why You Can’t Speak Yet (and a 3-Step Method to Fix It)
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If you struggle to speak and feel blocked every time you try, I have one simple question for you.
Have you repeated everything enough times?
Think about school. Lots of us did better on written tests than oral ones, and that rarely meant we didn’t know the subject. We knew it on paper. We simply hadn’t said it out loud enough times for it to come out while someone was staring at us, waiting.
Personality plays a part, of course. But speaking another language is an oral test that never ends, and passing it takes a freaking huge amount of repetition.
I used to perform very badly at oral tests. I hated about 90% of my professors and 90% of the subjects, so I didn’t give an F, and the last thing I wanted was to spend my afternoons repeating stuff I didn’t care about.
Languages were the exception. I’d repeat new words on a loop, repeat dialogues, talk to myself all day long. The moment I realized I could read a text or follow a dialogue in a language I wanted to learn, I got a proper brain orgasm.
All of that came from repetition. Nothing else.
The method below makes repetition worth your time, because you only repeat sentences you’ll actually use.
Pick your favourite AI tool (mine is Claude) and ask for 10 short texts of about 10 sentences each, on different topics, told by someone in your exact position.
The key word is your. Some of my former students were frustrated because they couldn’t remember certain words and expressions. They didn’t need those words in their life, so their brain filed them as trash. The brain learns what it needs. Anything else takes ten times the repetition, and a person with a life has better things to do with their free time. Totally legit.
So before the AI writes anything, feed it your context:
- What part of the language do you actually need? At work, is it chatting with colleagues, talking to clients, or doing part of the job itself?
- Why are you learning? Pleasure or work, living in the country or abroad. If it’s for a hobby, pick the topics you gladly talk about.
- What does your week look like? Weekly habits are perfect for practising the present tense.
- What’s your background? Your story is perfect for the past tense.
Then ask for one text about your opinions, so you walk away with a minimum toolkit for real conversations. If your language has conditionals and subjunctives, ask for those too. And tell the AI to ask you more questions before it starts writing: the more it knows, the more tailored the texts.
Here’s the prompt I’d use. Copy it and fill in the brackets — even better: read it out loud and talk freely for all the information you need to add, I know you’re going to quit right away if you have to think and type everything.
I’m learning [LANGUAGE], my level is [LEVEL]. Write me 10 short texts (10 sentences each), told in first person by someone in my exact situation, so I can memorize them and use them in real conversations.
My situation:
- I learn for [work / pleasure / both]
- I live [in a country where it’s spoken / abroad]
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- At work I need it to [socialize with colleagues / talk to clients / do part of my job]
- My hobbies: […]
- My weekly routine: […]
- My background (where I’m from, what I studied, how I got here): […]
Include:
- one text about my weekly habits (present tense)
- one text about my background (past tense)
- one text with my opinions on a topic I care about
- if the language has conditionals and subjunctive, use them in at least one text
Before writing anything, ask me any extra questions you need to make the texts more relevant to my life. Keep vocabulary to what I would actually use.
Resist the urge to learn everything. I’ve watched students try: frustration, crisis, the whole package. I know what I’m talking about, and I don’t want to live through it again with anyone.
This is what I’m doing with some new students I see for intensive in-person classes these days.
I print every text twice.
- The first copy gets cut into full sentences, and the student has to put them back in the right order.
- The second copy gets cut into chunks, like I speak / fluently / how many languages, and the student rebuilds each sentence piece by piece.
Out loud. Please, not just in your head.
If paper isn’t your thing, ask your AI to help you memorize with tricks and games. The strips and the games are tools that make repetition less of a hassle.
In the end you just need to repeat. There is no way around it.
Learning texts by heart is an incredible game changer, for three reasons.
You’re more prepared. In a conversation with people you don’t know, you already have a toolkit of sentences ready to go, so you don’t have to think about every word. Less stress, more confidence, and far fewer traumatic moments in the language you’re learning.
You get past the start. Starting is the hardest part of any conversation. Most people never push through that little initial stress, and once you do, the rest usually gets easier (until you’re tired and the words dry up, of course). Having sentences ready is what carries you over that first hump.
Locals warm up to you. They can see you’ve made your part of the effort. People are much happier talking to someone who can put a few sentences one after the other than to someone throwing out random words here and there.
In the Frequency Circle, my private community on Skool, you’ll find 10 texts I prepared for Italian and Dutch. I wrote them for a young person moving from somewhere into a relatively big city, so you won’t find hotel check-ins. You’ll find renting a room, flatmates, problems with the house, going for brunch.
Originally published at https://chiaralanguagefreak.substack.com on October 6, 2026.
