public speaking is the #1 anxiety producer in the USA. Its a gripping fear that you stand before others, and sweat, and freeze up, and your brain simply wont spit out the words. There are many places, and books that will give help to calm this fear. Since its such a common fear, many folks have written extensively on it.

Tips like picturing the other people in their underwear. People cannot be very scary if they are in their underpants, can they? Or practice at home. First just talk out loud. To a cat, to a stuffed animal, or even to the book you are holding. Next look in the mirror and see that you CAN do this!

My husband came from italy and was so afraid of speaking. he thought for sure once he started speaking people would think him to be stupid, under educated, and with a poor control of the english language he would come off looking like a person who didnt care enough about the language to learn it properly. Then he realized that most of america speaks BAD english! we take short cuts, we chop off words, we cut each other off when we are speaking. We rarely use proper english, we prefer slang. we like to add on extra words like "you know" or "umm" and "well" they dont add a thing to our sentence, they just serve to show that we are thinking out our thoughts. We also tend to speak without thinking our whole sentence through before we spit it out. We simply think that whatever we have to say is important and we spit it all out!

In the end my husband saw that his command of the english language was getting better, and those around him used english in such a bad manner anyway, he blended right in. America is a melting pot of many different languages and I hope you untie your tongue and jump right in there.