English tuition helps with confidence …..
Our confidence is not fixed, it fluctuates. One day we can feel bold , witty and interesting, on another we can feel dull as a grey dishcloth on the back step.
One day we can put up our hands and speak, or we can easily volunteer an opinion, on another day we find talking in front of people deeply embarrassing. We feel uncomfortable inside and out.
So Confidence sometimes seems a strange elusive creature….we need to be in rapport inside ourselves and out…Rapport is key to confidence. Rapport with ourselves and rapport with others…rapport with our writing and words….
English tutoring involves encouraging confidence so we can express ourselves comfortably…
Writing and speaking do require self belief. For there is something very brave in writing, in creating something on paper that didn’t exist before, particularly when that writing draws upon ‘you’ in some way.
Looking at a blank screen or piece of blank paper and then trying to create something requires confidence, it requires a first step, then a second, then a third…..
And part of the ‘make up’ of confidence involves our ability to feel comfortable and in rapport, even when we are in a new or relatively unfamiliar situation
- Here’s any easy way of helping yourself or someone else soar in confidence and get into rapport: just get think about or get them to start talking about one of their passions, about something or someone they love.
- THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT- Ask them HOW they do what they love…the HOW takes them into their experience and thus ANCHORS them into the passion positively and directly.
- HOW is the key….RAPPORT is the outcome…
Here’s a wonderful example from Dickens , my favourite writer who recognized that doing something you love animates even the most beleaguered, down trodden human spirit…Swiveller loves the cards and wishes to help the ‘small servant’ so he models a way of playing the cards and behaving whilst they play the cards with a new name too…
…the name ‘marchioness’ gives the small servant confidence, puts her in a special rapport with herself and her new circumstances…
‘Now,’ said Mr Swiveller, putting two sixpences into a saucer, and trimming the wretched candle, when the cards had been cut and dealt, ‘those are the stakes. If you win, you get ‘em all. If I win, I get ‘em. To make it seem more real and pleasant, I shall call you the Marchioness, do you hear?’
The small servant nodded.
‘Then, Marchioness,’ said Mr Swiveller, ‘fire away!’
The Marchioness, holding her cards very tight in both hands, considered which to play, and Mr Swiveller, assuming the gay and fashionable air which such society required, took another pull at the tankard, and waited for her lead.
The ‘small servant’ becomes the ‘Marchioness’ in the ‘real and pleasant’ game of cards and MAGIC happens…TRANSFORMATION!
