THIS IS PART OF AN INTERVIEW FROM SPEAK UP MAGAZINE

Reporter: ...What is the best advice you can give Brazilian English students who want to improve their speaking skills?

Rich Jones: I see so many people; they are like neurotically trying to figure it out in their head. They are studying all the grammar books and they are getting all the grammar figured out, as if that they can get all the grammar perfectly organized in their brain.

"There it is; there is present perfect; there is present perfect continuous; I got the past perfect; I got it all there; okay, now it is there, all there, ready to use, now I just got to find the opportunity to use it?".

But you will never use a language on that basis. Never. Like when you are a kid, when you learn to speak a language you start to speak, you make mistakes, people laugh, you say stupid words, you get the word wrong. It makes no difference because you are making and effort to make a connection to communicate. If people could understand that, could do that, they would develop in the language so much faster.

Grammar is secondary. The desire to communicate is what you need to have.

 If you have that, you are well on the way to developing in English. And I have seen people who are not very good in English who communicate extremely well to people in English. And people look at them and go: "Wow! That guy is speaking so well"; And I say, "He is making all sorts of mistakes, much more than you". He goes, "No, you are Kidding!" "Yes, But he is not afraid to speak. He has the desire to communicate, and you don't. And that is what is stopping you."

So all of my training, all of my coaching, all of my teaching is based on that principle. The reasons we don't communicate are internal reasons, not external. It has nothing to do with a language, very little to do with the teacher, actually... and I am  a teacher, and I am saying that... very little to do with the grammar books that you study, or the material that you are studying in the class... much more to do with your desire to communicate. And obviously a good teacher can help you enormously, but these are secondary concerns. Your desire is what will... will get you there.