Andrey Serbinenko schrieb:

The problem I believe is in a typical French perfectionism: people are
so disgusted and embarrassed by their own self-perceived poor performance
that speaking English becomes a dreadful ordeal.

They rather are disgusted by people walking in and boldly starting to
chatter English and expecting everybody to understand them. It often
helps a lot if you start by modestly asking whether somebody understands
English.

Stefan