It is the differences in culture, Asian consider good teachers have to be mean. The mean people are so critical, they will pick on your mistakes and criticize your work. On the other hands, the westerners consider good teachers should be friendly and easy to get along with, teachers and students may talk jokes to each other. The teachers point out their students' mistake but not criticize. If you can change your attitude, considering the good teachers should be friendly and easy to get along with, then you will not nervous when you talk with your teacher. Have you every hug your teacher? BrSwartz appears to be a friendly teacher, give him a hug then start, you woun't be nervous.

Why do you think so? Because they are afraid of the mistakes duh!

@ Jura Hugging teachers at school may not be acceptable, but under some situation, it is necessity. I have seen the Australian teachers hug the students: The fact: During the years in high school, my daughters were placed in a special program, they have to learn presentation to compete. My daughters were at the International level, I noticed that most of the teachers including Chinese giving hugs to their students before they went to the stage. Australian teachers hug their students too. The presentations were delivery in English. The results, most of the non-native English speakers took the lead, they were Chinese and German.

Hi, this is a natural reaction to not feeling confident in a language which is not your own language. I would not recommend hugging your teacher either, this is not acceptable behaviour in many schools/colleges/unis. This site has some helpful information for you about conversation starters http://www.italki.com/knowledge/contribution-SMALL+TALK+CONVERSATION+STARTERS.htm

Yeah, but I think some people aren't afraid of making mistakes. They will talk talk talk and don't care if they make mistakes at all. Other people, like me, will be afraid to talk with native speakers or teachers because we don't want to make a mistake or appear like we don't know what we are doing. Also, for me, I don't like to cause pain, and I think it would be very painful for a native/high-level Spanish speaker to talk with me in Spanish. : )