What to Do When You Make a Mistake in English at Work

You are in the middle of a sentence, you know exactly where it is going, and then somewhere between your thought and your words, something slips. The wrong word comes out, or the right one simply does not arrive, or you say something and feel, instantly, that it did not land the way you meant it. In that moment, everything tightens.

Sometimes the mistake is small and passes unnoticed. Sometimes it leads to a genuine misunderstanding; you have to untangle everything. Sometimes it is simply the feeling, uncomfortable and hard to shake, that you let yourself down. Again.

This month we are looking at mistakes, not how to avoid them, because you cannot, but what to do when they happen, in the moment and afterwards, when the mental replay starts in your head.

What is actually happening

When a mistake happens in English, there is usually a split second before you feel it. Then comes the awareness, and then, for many professionals, the spiral. The spiral tends to go something like this: the mistake happened, everyone noticed, my English is not good enough, I should have prepared more, what if it happens again?

Lindsay is a Sales Manager based in Hong Kong who uses English primarily for writing emails, but she also has to explain complex processes to her clients, things like how to return damaged goods or apply for a refund, while managing the fact that she is often thinking in Japanese or Mandarin at the same time. She told me that phone calls worry her most, because she cannot see the other person's face and cannot tell whether a misunderstanding has happened.

That uncertainty, not the mistake itself, is often what professionals find hardest to sit with, not what went wrong exactly, but whether it went wrong, and what the other person is now thinking. What I want to say clearly is this: the spiral is not caused by the mistake. It is caused by what your brain does in the seconds after it. That is the part that, with the right tools practised consistently, can be changed.

Why mistakes feel bigger in a second language

When you make a mistake in your first language, you barely notice it. You correct yourself and move on almost automatically; the recovery is so fast it is nearly invisible. In a second or third language, the same mistake lands differently. It feels like evidence that your English is not good enough, that people are judging you, and that you should have known better. Under pressure, those thoughts feel true even when they are not.

Yola is a Purchasing Department Manager in Poland, and she described something I hear in different forms from almost every professional I work with. She said, "I often thought I wasn't smart enough. I didn't want to look stupid or for people to laugh at me. Those fears never helped me to speak better English; those thoughts always made matters worse." She is right. The fear of making a mistake costs more than the mistake itself; it narrows your thinking, tightens your throat, and makes the next sentence harder than it needs to be. The mistake is rarely the problem. The story you tell yourself about it usually is.

What to do in the moment

The most important thing you can do when a sentence goes wrong is keep speaking, not perfectly, not smoothly, just keep going. A short recovery phrase gives you a way to do that without losing your footing entirely, and you do not need many of them. You need two or three that feel natural enough that you can reach for them without thinking.

“Let me put that another way.”

Use this when the sentence did not come out clearly, and you want another go at it. It signals that you are in control, simply choosing a different route to the same destination.

“What I mean is.”

Use this for a quick mid-sentence correction. It is calm, natural, and doesn’t draw unnecessary attention to the moment.

“Sorry, let me start that again.”

Use this when you need a proper reset. It sounds confident rather than apologetic, because you are showing that you know what you want to say, you are simply finding the clearest way to say it.

These phrases need to be within reach before you need them. Practise them in low-stakes conversations until reaching for them feels easy and natural, and then, when the pressure is higher, they will be there.

What to do afterwards

The harder part for many professionals is not the moment of the mistake itself but the hours that follow, the replaying, going back over the conversation, finding every imperfect word, every pause, every moment where you wish you had said something differently. Jimmy, a client from Hong Kong, told me he sometimes worries that people will judge his level of English or his communication skills in general, and that when people have expectations, he does not want to disappoint. That worry does not stay in the meeting room. It travels home with him. This is completely normal, and it is also, after a certain point, not useful.

When you notice you are replaying, try asking yourself two questions: was I understood, and did the conversation achieve what it needed to achieve? If the answer to both is yes, the conversation worked; it may not have felt elegant from the inside, but it got where it needed to go, and that matters more than the imperfections. If there was a genuine misunderstanding, decide what you can do about it now, a follow-up email, a quick clarification, or a note to prepare that phrase differently next time. Do that one thing, and then, consciously, let the replay go. It has told you what it needed to tell you. You can learn the lesson and move on to something that serves you.

Recovery is a skill

What I want you to take from July is this: recovery is not something that happens to you. It is something you can build, a phrase that brings you back into the sentence, a question that clarifies without drawing attention to what went wrong, a way of thinking about mistakes that is honest but not punishing. Jola described the shift that made the biggest difference for her: "Eventually, I realised that making mistakes in English would not kill me. My main goal was to understand and be understood. When I was able to stop judging myself, I became braver, and then one day there was a click."

Every mistake you recover from adds to a bank of evidence that you can handle this, and that evidence is what confidence is actually made of, not the absence of mistakes, but the knowledge that when they happen, you know what to do. If that is something you want to build, July is for you.

This month

This week, choose one recovery phrase and say it out loud three times before you need it. "Let me put that another way" is a good place to start. Say it until it feels like yours, and then use it, even in a small, low-stakes moment. The professionals who handle pressure best are not the ones who never stumble. They are the ones who have prepared for when they do. I will be writing about this across all my channels throughout July.  Find Your English Voice is a space for international professionals who want to feel more comfortable speaking English at work, especially under pressure. Whatever brought you here, you are very welcome.

Tanya Kaczanow is the founder of Find Your English Voice. She works with international professionals who want to speak English with more calm, clarity and confidence when the pressure is on. findyourenglishvoice.uk

Resources

Free PDF guide: findyourenglishvoice.uk/free-guide

Find Your English Voice: mybook.to/FindYourEnglishVoice

FYEV Workbook: mybook.to/FYEV-Workbook

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Questions I Hear Most About Making Mistakes in English at Work

Why does a mistake feel so much bigger in English than it would in my first language?

In your first language, recovery is automatic; you correct yourself and move on without really noticing. In a second language, the mistake lands and your brain immediately starts looking for what it means: was I understood, did I sound unprofessional, should I have prepared more? That internal commentary is what makes it feel significant, not the mistake itself. The more you practise recovering out loud in real conversations, the faster and more automatic that recovery becomes.

I keep replaying conversations for hours afterwards. How do I make it stop?

Your brain replays difficult experiences because it is trying to protect you, looking for what went wrong so it can do better next time, and that is useful up to a point. When you notice the replay has started, try asking yourself two questions: was I understood, and did the conversation achieve what it needed to? If the answer to both is yes, the conversation worked, even if it did not feel smooth from the inside. If there is something you can actually do about it, a follow-up email or a quick clarification, do that one thing. Then give your brain something else to hold alongside the difficulty: one thing that went well. Your brain is very good at finding evidence for whatever it is looking for, so give it something useful to find.

What should I do when I lose my thread mid-sentence in a meeting?

Pause briefly, take a breath, and reach for a recovery phrase. "Let me put that another way" is the most versatile one I know, it signals to the room that you are in control and simply choosing a different route to the same point. You do not need to rescue the original sentence, you just need your meaning to be understood. If you genuinely cannot find the word in the moment, say the thing simply. A short, clear sentence will almost always be better understood than a complex one that falls apart halfway through.

Is it better to acknowledge a mistake or just keep going?

It depends on whether the mistake caused a misunderstanding. If it did, a brief acknowledgement and correction is more professional than hoping nobody noticed, and something as simple as "sorry, what I meant was" followed by a clearer version is enough. If the mistake did not cause a misunderstanding, keeping going is usually the better option, as drawing attention to small errors can make them feel larger than they are, both to you and to the people in the room.

Why do I worry so much about phone calls specifically?

In a face-to-face conversation, you have a constant stream of feedback, nods, expressions, the body language that tells you whether you are being understood. On a phone call, that feedback disappears, and the uncertainty that replaces it can feel much heavier than the conversation itself. One thing that helps is building a short checking-in phrase into your calls: "Does that make sense?" or "I want to make sure I have explained that clearly." You are not apologising for your English. You are being a thorough, professional communicator, which is exactly what you are.

Does it get easier over time?

Yes, not because you stop making mistakes, but because your relationship with them changes. Each recovery builds the next one, and over time a mistake becomes something you move through rather than something that stops you. Several of the professionals I work with have told me there was a moment, after months of consistent effort, when something clicked. Karolina described it as suddenly feeling the flow, and she said she had never looked back. That moment does not come from avoiding difficulty. It comes from showing up in spite of it, enough times that your brain updates its assessment of what you can handle. And it can.