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Mark& #39;s a nice guy and has great advice, but I& #39;m about to challenge this piece of advice:
"um", "like", "you know", etc. are *FINE* and *NATURAL* when giving talks.
You are better off spending your time practicing other aspects of public speaking than trying to eliminate these. https://twitter.com/marktechson/status/1291045085858144259">https://twitter.com/marktechs...
"um", "like", "you know", etc. are *FINE* and *NATURAL* when giving talks.
You are better off spending your time practicing other aspects of public speaking than trying to eliminate these. https://twitter.com/marktechson/status/1291045085858144259">https://twitter.com/marktechs...
There& #39;s a reason we tend to use these filler words - it& #39;s a natural partner of human speech. They appear in every natural language. The serve an important linguistic purpose.
The biggest is that in conversations they indicate that the current speaker isn& #39;t done with a thought, so that other people int he conversation don& #39;t interrupt. Of course, when on stage it& #39;s a one side conversation. But- this isn& #39;t the only purpose.
They can also be used to emphasize the next phrase that comes after- people tend to pay more attention after a filler word. It also lets the audience in on your emotions - like if you& #39;re about to approach a delicate topic.
They also give the audience time to process and catch up. While we can listen a lot faster than we can talk, we can& #39;t understand faster than we can talk. So these fillers tell your audience to process a bit before the next phrase.
It also humanizes you! I get super freaked out when people don& #39;t use filler words and don& #39;t blink and don& #39;t breathe during talks. Be human, be conversations, be affable.
There is research on all this and if you& #39;re curious the terms to search for are "filler words" and "disfluencies". Research seems to show that there is a "sweet spot" - too many fillers and you come off poorly, but there& #39;s a big threshold underneath that where people don& #39;t notice
and they even (subconsciously) appreciate it and understand more!
