Well hello there, Reader, I'm so thankful to have the opportunity to connect with you today.

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My Dad recently invited me to go with him and few friends to watch a live community theatre production of Shakespear’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”

Community theatre is something I’ve never watched before - but it was so much fun. The actors are all volunteers from the local community, and they are not (usually) professional actors or actresses. They just love the theatre and acting.

What made it fun was that it was live, and that it was by people who made mistakes! (Mistakes that you could see and hear.)

In many scenes, lines were forgotten which was often followed by a few seconds of silence as the actor raced to figure out what to say next.

But here's what I noticed the most: Not the mistake, but what the actor or actress did when they made the mistake!

They never freaked out.

They didn't stop talking.

They didn't hide behind other actors or actresses.

Nope. Instead, they just kept going!

They didn't let a mistake stop them from moving forward through what they needed to do.

The most common way they found their way through forgotten bits was to quickly find a different way to say what he needed to say.

The play wasn't perfect - nor were we, the audience, expecting it to be. We knew beforehand that this was amateur community based theatre - not a Broadway production.

The actors/actresses did their best to tell the story they were trying to tell - and overall, they did a great job considering it was over 2 hours long and all dialogue.

Here's what you can learn from this:

The best ways to deal with mistakes in your English is to:

1. Keep going! Remember that your goal with using English is to get your ideas across to someone else. It doesn't have to be perfect. Perfection comes over time!
2. Find other ways to say what you intend to say. If you forget how to say what you want to say one way, can you come up with an alternative way to get your thoughts across? (Try it!)
3. Let others know you are trying! It's perfectly ok to say that you are still learning English and to please be patient! I've done this countless times with my Spanish - it works wonders!

#1 and #2 can also help you on the CELPIP. Having minor grammar and vocabulary mistakes won't dramatically impact your score - perfection isn't required to do well on the exam. Force yourself to just keep going, even if you feel like you made a mistake. (Continued errors or grammar mistakes that make it hard to understand you will impact your score negatively - but not minor ones.)

Make your focus to express your ideas, and do your best to find other ways to say what you need to say if you get stuck.

What has been your best strategy to follow when you make a mistake in English? Hit reply and let me know! I'll share your tip in my next podcast episode.