I stutter occasionally. It’s not a major noticeable thing (I don’t think), but it can break my concentration while I’m in mid-sentence, which then makes the overall dysfluency worse. And then sometimes I have a hard time pronouncing my words. Things come out slurry and drunk-like (the clinical term is “dysarthric”). Only rarely do my speech difficulties keep me from opening my mouth, though.
I have to give a talk tomorrow. I’m more nervous than I’d usually be because lately I have been feeling so dysfluent. I don’t know why this is (maybe premature PMS?), but it’s frustrating. I keep practicing my talk over and over, and I get a little better each time. But I want so badly to say that something is “superfluous”, because I just love this word. It’s the perfect word. But no matter how many times I practice, I just can’t get it to come out. I don’t want to dumb down my talk just because I can’t say a simple multisyllabic word. But it looks like I’m going to have to.
Does anyone have first-hand experience dealing with a speech impediment in the professional setting? I give talks quite frequently, and I generally do a good job (I think). But I dunno about tomorrow. Anyone have any tips or inspirational stories?
I don’t have any personal experiences to share, but the thread title immediately reminded me of Alan Rabinowitz. He had a severe speech impediment as a child, and he learned to overcome it because he wanted to become the voice for endangered wildcat species. He is the CEO of Panthera and a spokesman for The Stuttering Foundation.
Why would inarticulation involve pre-PMS? Is your uterus connected to your larynx? Maybe you’ve got the jitters because you’re not sure how to get your point across, so call a less favorite vocabulary “dumbing down.” What do you want to say? Say it. If it holds any merit people will hear the message and remember it.
Monthly hormone fluctuations don’t just involve what goes on with you uterus. If someone says they get weepy when they have PMS do you wonder how their tear ducts are connected to their uterus?
monstro I think they say the way to overcome stuttering is to sing. So, sing the presentation
For me my tiny little stutter is actually something that comes out when I’m talking to people I know well - I don’t really know why, but at some point my annoying public speaking panic stopping me from speaking at all turned into annoying public speaking panic meaning I keep on talking with no brakes. So for me public speaking generally means I need to make myself get more nervous beforehand, rather than less. I suspect that won’t help you much!
My advice would be to use a backup word, and then throw superfluous in there. “…because using Option A is useless, it’s superfluous, and so…” Practice your speech both with and without the little interjection. I find that the worst time for me for stuttering is when I’m explaining something, and when I’ve actually landed the point, I seem to get a grace period. That might be different for you, but then either way you’ve got your talk ready and fluid enough so that if at the time you feel differently you know you can just drop it in.
I’m a teacher so everyday is public speaking to some extent I also do parent nights and such. I spent 7 years in speech therapy, still have a funny accent, and still occasional stutter, mispronounce a word, talk to fast, or get tongue tied. We lack a useful text so I have to do a lot more lecture and note giving than I’d prefer. I’m also one of the more popular (and I think successful) teachers at my school. I say the last not to brag, but so you know it does not hamper me.
Part of my strategy is just to accept it and move on. I’m not embarrassed about it. Occasionally a student will ask me to repeat myself so I do. I just have decided that I’m good at what I do and that the students will do well because of me and if I flub a word or stutter occasionally so be it. Heck sometimes I’ll even get tongue-tied and have to stop, collect myself, and restart the whole sentence. It part of who I am, but it does not keep me from being a good teacher so I refuse to be embarrassed about it.
monsto I’m sorry my first post was flippant. I know about the weepy feelings that can come, but just didn’t see how PMS could affect actual speech. Still, it wasn’t very empathetic of me and after reading the posts I think I understand it a little better. Hopefully you feel better today, and good luck with your speech!
No personal experience, but you may enjoy watching something by Francesca Martinez. She’s a British comic who had some problems at birth and has speech and walk impediments, I just finished her book “What the **** is normal anyway?” (giving the name from memory, may not be exact) and loved it.
I watched this TEDx talk the other day, by Megan Washington who is a fairly well-known Australian singer. I have seen her on panel shows before (as well as heard her sing) and had no idea she has a stutter. She uses a ‘sing-song’ technique to get past certain words.
Anyone with a speech impediment who gives public talks?
Here’s a site of famous people I found, maybe you’ve seen it as well. Can’t vouch for it, but never knew before many of these people ever having a problem with stuttering including those on the video. It had Marilyn Monroe, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, Joe Biden, John Stossel, so many more that I wasn’t aware of.
My dad used to stutter when he was young, I heard it was fairly bad. We would have never known, had he and other of his family members not have told us. He said he would always practice on his way back home with a long walk from school, and any other chance he could get. He said he would really get stuck on certain words, I remember him saying “aluminum” especially gave him the most trouble, and took the longest to learn. He eventually overcame it. This is why I’m puzzled why some say there is no cure for it, while some other experts say it is mostly a do-it-yourself project. Quite a few seem to say that various therapies usually do reduce it to some extent.
As far as mispronouncing words, this is something I have had to work on myself, and still do on occasion as an adult. “Entrepreneur” being one word that used to stand out with me, but is no problem now. Even “breakfast” was a word that I had trouble with. I always knew when I was screwing up, at least around my younger brother because he would always smile and sometimes laugh, but he would always help me. Without his help, I think it would have taken me much longer.
There is a comedian named Josh Blue that has cerebral palsy and has a bit of the slurred speech. I think he’s great, especially when he tells of his story of being thrown in a drunk tank. There’s also a evangelical preacher with cerebral palsy that has a much more severe form of slurred speech, but has been doing public speaking for many decades.
“Superfluous” is a great word, but if it’s tripping you up, there is no shame in substituting an alternative. It’s not really necessary, you know?
Hope all goes well today. Take a deep breath and slow down if you start to tense up. It will just look like you are pausing for effect and will give the listeners time to think about what you’ve said so far.
I have Tourette’s which in my case includes some minor vocal tics; they have changed over time but I’ve had both a repeating “throat clearing” type noise as well as clicking my tongue. In grad school I was a teaching assistant and had to give lectures to 100-150 students at a time.
I think the first thing to remember is that people are there because they want to hear what you are saying; I’ve listened to talks by people with noticeable speech impediments and it’s amazing how much my brain kind of glosses over that stuff because I’m focused on what they are talking about.
Go to youtube and look up some of Stephen Hawking’s talks. His voice synthesizer isn’t exactly smooth speech but people are fascinated by what he is saying.
As you’ve already done, practice practice practice. When you can give your talk in a natural manner, without having to constantly refer to notes and you aren’t staring off into the distance and saying “Um” a lot, it’s much more relaxing for you. Assuming that you know the subject well you’ll also be able to answer questions and pick up where you left off without getting lost. Being relaxed like this lowers the stress of giving a speech - I don’t know if that helps with stuttering but it certainly improves the overall presentation.
I stutter severely. For most of my childhood I was in speech therapy, and it definitely has an impact on my life. I don’t really know what level of disfluency you’re talking about, so some of these may be a bit extreme, but a few tips:
[ol]
[li]Disclosure. For me, it’s not the kind of thing I can hide for any length of time (even saying my name is difficult), so just saying at the start of a presentation/interview “by the way, you might notice something weird in my speech - don’t worry, I’m not choking, I just stutter!” can actually make me more fluent because I’m not anxiously trying to pretend there’s nothing wrong. On this note, people will mirror your reaction to dysfluencies - if you look like you’re about to burst into tears when you’re stuttering badly, they’ll think it’s a very serious thing, If you just roll your eyes, smile, and shrug it off, they won’t notice nearly as much. [/li]
[li]You can try to kind of lighten and extend the first syllable of a work you’re blocking (“block” is the term for when you’re not r-r-r-repeating sounds like Porky Pig, but just can’t get any sound out at all) and ease yourself into it. The technical term is light contact prolongation, and it can be very helpful. Even if you just stutter on a few words, using more relaxed, fluid speech even when you don’t need to can help when you encounter a block.[/li]
[li]If you’re giving a speech, you can sketch out how you’re going to talk and minimize stuttering. I believe this is what Winston Churchill did with basically everything he said - all those little quips and jokes were planned out ahead of time. If you look at the notes for a speech I’m about to give, I’ll put in little “light contact” or “breathe” marks along the way - it actually can make the end result better than what it would sound like if I didn’t stutter, because I’m speaking much slower than I would naturally.[/li][/ol]
And stuttering really isn’t as rare and unusual as most people think - 1 out of 100 people stutter, meaning over 68 million people worldwide. It really needs more positive publicity; “The King’s Speech” was great (although inaccurate in some important ways), but apart from that, most people’s mental image of a stutterer is the aforementioned Porky Pig. I was actually considering doing an “Ask the Stutter” MPSIMS thread, if anyone would be interested, because I think just getting more information about it out there helps a lot. In the end, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that most people don’t really care whether you pause a bit before saying a word - what you’re saying matters more to them.
(With that said, dang 99% of the world, you’ve got no idea how easy communication is for you.)
Had a tour guide in London who had a rather severe stutter. It was rather distracting at first, but he knew his stuff, was very funny, and did not seem to be in the least bit self-conscious. I certainly enjoyed the trip, as did my 8-year old.
My cousin (we were best friends as kids) has been a stuttering teacher for over 20 years. He is in a society where student discipline is a given. He actually emigrated to Canada, qualified as a teacher and couldn’t deal with the abuse he copped from high school students. He ended up going back to Pakistan.
