I think it's a great tip and a great way to learn a language; even if I must admit that it's not easy, to let your fear of making errors behind you and interact friendly with person who talk natively the language you want to learn !;)

Regards,

Marco

I think the reason for this is that from our media, we are used to different ways of hearing things said.

a perfect example is the movie character Yoda, who does not use proper grammar and yet every native speaker understands him and some mimic him.

also there just seems to be a looser grammatical structure in English, that is, there are lots of ways to say the same thing properly.

In contrast our ears are trained to listen to certain words, so if the word is mispronounced it is immediately noticeable. This can be seen with words like potato and tomato, they can both be pronounced po-tah-to/to-mah-to or po-tay-to/to-may-to but in some regions where only one form is used it is hard to recognise or jarring to hear. Even the slight pronunciation differences between Americanized English and British English can be rather off-putting at time.