Teaching Confidence, Not Just Verbs

We’ve all seen it. The student who can ace every grammar quiz, flawlessly conjugate the most irregular verbs on paper, but falls silent when asked a simple question in class. Their eyes dart downwards, a nervous blush creeps up their neck, and the carefully memorized rules evaporate into a fog of anxiety. On the other hand, we’ve also seen the student who stumbles through sentences, mixes up tenses, and has a charmingly flawed accent, yet communicates with infectious joy and fearless determination. The difference isn’t knowledge; it’s confidence.

As language educators, we are masters of the explicit: the subjunctive mood, the case system, the phonetic chart. We build curricula around lexical sets and grammatical progressions. But the most profound impact we can have often lies in teaching the implicit—the soft skills of courage, resilience, and self-belief. To create fluent speakers, we must teach confidence, not just verbs.

The Invisible Wall: Understanding the Affective Filter

Pioneering linguist Stephen Krashen gave us a powerful concept to understand this phenomenon: the affective filter. Imagine an invisible emotional wall inside a learner’s mind. When the filter is low, the student is relaxed, motivated, and self-confident. Language input flows freely through the filter and gets processed, leading to acquisition. But when the filter is high, it acts as a barrier. Stress, anxiety, and a fear of embarrassment raise the wall, blocking language input from ever reaching the brain’s language processing centers. A student can be sitting in the most well-designed lesson, but if their affective filter is high, very little learning will actually occur.

Our primary role, then, is not just as a linguistic guide, but as an architect of the classroom environment. Our goal is to systematically dismantle the bricks of fear and anxiety that build this filter. How do we do it?

Actionable Strategies for Building a Confident Classroom

Moving from theory to practice requires a conscious shift in our teaching priorities. It means valuing communication over perfection and fostering a space where vulnerability is not only safe but celebrated. Here are concrete strategies to make that happen.

1. Reframe a “Mistake” as a “Brave Attempt”

The single greatest source of anxiety for language learners is the fear of making a mistake. We must fundamentally change the classroom culture around errors. Mistakes aren’t signs of failure; they are evidence of learning in progress. They show that a student is pushing beyond their comfort zone and experimenting with new structures.

• Celebrate Corrections: Instead of a sharp correction, try a positive reformulation. If a student says, “I go to the store yesterday”, respond with, “Oh, you went to the store yesterday? What did you buy?” This corrects the error in a natural, conversational way without shaming the student.
• The “Mistake of the Day”: Create a fun, low-stakes routine where you highlight a common or particularly interesting mistake (anonymously, of course). Discuss why it’s a logical error and what it teaches everyone about the language. This normalizes error as a collective learning tool.
• Share Your Own Goofs: Be vulnerable. Tell your students about a time you confidently asked for “embarrassed” (embarazada) instead of “embarrassed” (avergonzada) in Spanish, accidentally announcing you were pregnant. Laughter is a powerful tool for lowering the affective filter.

2. Build Intrinsic Motivation, Not Just Grade-Dependency

Extrinsic motivators like grades and test scores can create performance anxiety, raising the affective filter. While they have their place, our focus should be on cultivating intrinsic motivation—the genuine desire to learn the language for its own sake.

• Connect to Passions: Take time to learn what your students love. Are they into K-pop, Spanish football, French cinema, or Japanese video games? Tailor your content to their interests. Instead of a generic text about tourism, analyze song lyrics from their favorite artist or have them debate which team is better in the target language.
• Offer Choice and Autonomy: Whenever possible, give students a choice. Let them select from a few different prompts for a writing assignment or pick the topic for their next presentation. Ownership of the learning process is a powerful motivator.
• Focus on Real-World Tasks: Frame activities around what they can do with the language. “Today, we’re going to learn how to order coffee and a pastry at a café in Paris”, is far more compelling than, “Today, we’re learning the conditional tense.”

3. Design for Success with Scaffolding

Confidence is built on a foundation of successful experiences. It’s our job to design activities where students are challenged but ultimately capable of succeeding. This is done through careful scaffolding.

• Think-Pair-Share: This classic technique is a lifesaver for anxious speakers. Giving students a moment to think silently, then discuss their ideas with a single partner, prepares and empowers them to share with the whole class.
• Provide Linguistic Support: Don’t expect them to produce language out of thin air. Write key vocabulary on the board. Provide sentence starters (“In my opinion…”, “I agree, but…”, “I’m not sure, but I think…”). These supports act as training wheels, giving students the stability to try speaking on their own.
• Prioritize Low-Stakes Practice: Maximize time spent in pair and small-group work. Speaking to one or two classmates is far less intimidating than addressing the entire class and the teacher. This is where the real practice—and confidence-building—happens.

4. The Power of Specific, Effort-Based Praise

Generic praise like “good job” is nice, but it’s not particularly effective. To build robust confidence, our praise must be specific and focused on effort and strategy, not just innate ability or correctness.

Instead of: “You’re a natural!”
Try: “I was so impressed by how you used your notes to construct that complex sentence. Your hard work is really paying off.”

Instead of: “Great answer.”
Try: “Thank you for taking a risk and trying to use that new vocabulary word. That was a brave attempt!”

This kind of feedback shows students that you see their process and value their courage. It teaches them that their success is within their control, a product of their effort, which is the cornerstone of a resilient learning mindset.

Conclusion: From Grammarians to Communicators

Our students will likely forget the precise rules for the past perfect subjunctive. They will forget the vocabulary list from chapter three. But they will never forget how they felt in our classrooms. Did they feel seen, supported, and safe? Or did they feel anxious, judged, and afraid?

By shifting some of our focus from grammatical precision to psychological well-being, we aren’t abandoning rigor. We are creating the very conditions necessary for rigor to take root. We are lowering the affective filter so that our brilliant lessons on verb conjugations can actually land. Our ultimate goal isn’t to create perfect grammarians; it’s to empower confident, resilient, and curious human beings who are willing and able to connect with others across linguistic and cultural divides. The confidence we build is the foundation upon which all the verbs, nouns, and phrases will stand for a lifetime.