Speaking English well (or maybe not so well) Did you have situations when people don't know that you're not quite able to understand them at this particular time? Of Course, I'm not speaking about the situations when you might be drunk. And those people are not bad people, they just don't know you. Let's think about learning English. You are polishing your skills and finally you are able to express yourself very natural, like native speakers. Although, you have a secret. You can do it only with a limited set of phrases. Hence, you may have a situation when you speak with somebody very smoothly and clearly, but he says to you something unexpected and your mind is collapsing. You are like a computer system, you don't have a response. What a person will think about you? If he hasn't studied other languages, he has no clue about your little secret. He may think that you are mocking at him or just you are weird. Anyway, that person doesn't understand your reaction. And you are in panic by this time. In this way, what can you do to help yourself? You can remember that is nothing wrong to ask a person to repeat his last sentence. Sounds easy, right? You always do it when speaking in your own language. But when you speak a foreign language, you are desperately willing to understand everything, and when you have problems in that area you may think that you are not a good learner and your language skills are poor. It is not quite so. You just need to explain your companion that English is not your first language. People usually are friendly and they will not be angry about this fact. You also can ask to rephrase the sentence or the question. Did you have this situation? How did you find a way out?