Is It Terrifying To You...? Does speaking with natives of the language you are learning sound terrifying to you? To me it did for a while. I'm going to talk a bit about my experience on Italki so far and why the heck I was afraid of talking to native English speakers. First things first, I have been learning English for a long period of time. In my English course, as in many others in my country, we are taught more grammar than the actual speaking part of the language, which I see it as a bad aspect of language courses in Brazil. Therefore, if we want to become fluent, we have to study outside school as well. So, after many years studying English and speaking to myself, I found this website. Here, I'm able to help people with Portuguese and be helped with English. So far, I have had a good experience with Italki, except for some bad ones with people who were neither interested in learning my language nor in helping me with theirs. Now, why did I use to have this fear of talking to native English speakers? Well, first because I'm a little bit shy when I meet someone, a foreigner? much worse! Second because I used to think my English wasn't good enough to hold a conversation with a native and that my accent was terrible and people was going to make fun of me. Besides all that, I used get nervous when I had to talk to a native English speakers; it seemed that all my knowledge of the English language disappeared when I saw a native. However, fortunately, I was able to overcome this fear. Once, a teacher of mine asked me: Would you make fun of someone learning your language or would you find (it- Do I have to put IT here?) cool that this person is taking the time to learn it? That question made me realize how silly I was, of course I find it awesome when someone is learning Portuguese! After that day, I decided to change. So, a couple of months ago I met this really nice American who has been helping me with my speaking and I also gladly help him with Portuguese. I can say I've made some breakthroughs so far.