Is it dilatory demise for the spoken word?

I still shudder when I feel that I’ve made a mistake in spoken or written English – I fear the cane descending upon my head any time. In our seventh year of primary school, you did not utter an English sentence unless you were confident that you’d silently practiced it to yourself and were cocksure. Unfortunately, most often you found you had to respond to a teacher’s question without prior practice.