It happens to all of us some of the time, but almost nobody knows what it’s called!
Well my friends, today we shed light on speech disfluency and how we as tour guides, tour leaders and tour managers can fall victim to this bad habit.
But never fear! We also talk about four ways to keep those pesky filler words out of your speech. That way people can focus on the amazing things that you are sharing, and won’t be distracted by the way you are saying them.
“Wait, what is speech disfluency? Is it genetic? What if my great grandfathers have it? Does it skip generation?”
Let’s clear up what I mean here.
Speech disfluency refers to any interruption in the regular flow of speech. Oftentimes, this is with filler words like ‘um’, ‘uh’, ‘you know’, or ‘like’, or another more possibly grating example, we all have that person in our lives who uses the word ‘like’ too much.
“So, like the reason that this church is so influential, I mean, like popular, or like know about it, yeah, it’s coz like the owner was like super wealthy, and that’s why it became like so famous.”
Anytime a speech disfluency is really evident, it’s ultimately distracting away from what you’re saying. But here’s four ways that you can really limit it happening to you.
Firstly, have someone record your tour or film yourself giving a tour. This way you’re going to be able to hone in and focus on what words you might be leaving in there.
I’d let you identify a few words that you might be saying. Practice giving your tour and replacing those words with silence. You might say, “I wanted to tell you about this church because it is not only the tallest in Italy but it’s also very famous.”
Thirdly, start watching your speech in everyday life. Use something like reminders in your phone or little stickies to keep you on track because if you’re doing it in your regular everyday speech, there’s a pretty good chance those words are sneaking into your tour as well.
And lastly, remember that speech disfluency tends to crop up if we’re nervous or tired. So run through that presentation, that tour, and that speech over and over until you’re feeling really comfortable with it. So there you have it.
Hopefully, you’ve learned a little something about speech disfluency. So get started today and let me know in the comments below if you discover what filler words were you using and what strategies did you use to reduce them or keep them to a minimum.
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