My  Issue When Speaking With Strangers 

Usually, I speak Japanese with my colleagues, so I seldom have the chance to use English in my daily conversations. However, I recently had a chance to do so with a few visitors who came to my workplace. Neither they nor I are native speakers of English, so we all spoke slowly in comparison to the speed of the conversations that occur between those who are.

I, myself, realized that I frequently uttered the phrase, “That's good!” as a response while I listened to them, but still couldn’t stop myself from doing it. Finally, at one point, after saying it yet again, one of them mimicked it, in a mocking tone, as a clear indication that I was overusing it. Naturally, I felt a little bit embarrassed as I know the importance of giving a variety of responses to show interest, as well as to allow for polite conversation.

One day, while speaking Japanese, I also realized that I usually use "いいですね" (an equivalent of "that's good" in English) as a response. At first, I thought this issue with my responses in Japanese was a direct carry-over from my situation with English, but after thinking about it, it seems to have different roots. However, in both situations, I think that I became just a little too nervous because I was speaking with strangers for the first time. Once I am able to deal with these problems and their origins, then, regardless of if I am speaking with strangers or not, I may be able to speak more naturally while talking in either language.*

Hi Yuka. An excellent job! Whatever changes that I’ve made were merely done to allow your sentences to sound more natural to my native ears, to clarify your ideas into full sentences, and to allow your paragraphs to "flow" into each other. I hope that this helps you! J.

*I think the issue is that you are too self-conscious about making a mistake, so it causes you to tense up and restricts your mind, which in turn, causes you to speak with robotic and unnatural replies. This is a very natural response when speaking to others for the first time, and especially, in another language. So, the more times that you put yourself in this situation, little by little, the better you will become at dealing with it and the effect it has on you. Best of luck!