I’ve often remarked on the speech affectation of undergrads in my classes. With “likes,” “ums,” “kind ofs” and “you knows” peppering their speech along with this almost valley girl-esque speak pattern. In more than one case, I’ve thought that those students with particularly distracting speech patterns would be taken so much more seriously if they, as the comedian in this video says, would just speak with authority.
Not sure if you have these speech patterns? Or what to do about it? Some tips:
Rowan Manahan suggests tape recording yourself in natural speech and listening for the cues: kind of, like, sort of, you know and the myriad of fillers that sneak into our conversations.
A Real Simple article about identifying and correcting eight common speech problems offers tips about everything from interrupting to correcting speech tics.
Fast Company also has a article that’s a bit old, but still has great advice for thinking about your speech patterns and what they say about you.
(hat tip, Lindsay Olson)
Comments
2 responses to “The Way You Speak Sort of Like, Matters, You Know?”
I like these links, really, I do. 🙂 I just Tweeted this. I think that we all can improve our speech patterns.
Great collection of links, huh? I love the video. I agree about improving speech patterns. I’m guilty of the “kind of” and “sort of” fillers more often than I probably realize.