Coping with Stuttering

If you  are plagued with stuttering I know how you feel but don't give up hope.

When I was younger I couldn't speak to anybody without stuttering like a machine gun even when speaking with somebody on the telephone. But through coaching  from my Mother who was professional actress  and through determination and practice I soon overcame this problem and can now make entertaining and persuasive presentations to audiences of all sizes, with only the occasional stutter.  This happens usually only when I am particularly stressed out or tired.

 There are no magic button in your brain to help you over come this problem but it can be beaten.
It is just like learning to ride that bicycle. When you were young and learning to ride  the first few times you  probably came home with bruised knees, legs and arms, but soon learned to ride like a pro.  And so it is with learning to overcome stuttering and speaking fluently

There are a number of things you can do to help you overcome this demond such as:

• Practice deep breathing exercises  to develop your lungs and breath control.
• Remember to relax and take deep breaths as you speak.
• Prepare well  and become engrossed in your subject. This  will get your mind off yourself making you more relaxed.
• Relax your jaw muscles when speaking  -- especially if you begin to stutter.
• Use shorter sentences.
• Practice problem words and phrases
• Remember to use visualization techniques just like athletes. Picture yourself making a fluent presentation with proper breathing and relaxation.

A Simple Truth To Help You Fight Stage Fright

There are various ways to combat stage fright, but  one thing you should remember and keep upermost inf your mind is a simple fact.

That fact cannot be better expressed than Jeffrey Gitomer in his book  Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Green Book of Getting Your Way : "Your audience wants to get to know you, to like you, to have confidence in you, to believe you, to trust you, to understand you, to learn from you, to smile or laugh, [with you] and to feel like you value them."

Keep that in mind -- always -- and you will have won at least 50 percent of our battle against stage fright. That is the simple truth that will help you to fight stage fright.

How Do You Know They're Listening?

How do you know if your audience is listening and how your presentation is going over?

One of the easiest ways,  depending on the nature ofy our presentation. is to ask questions. This can not only  make it more interesting for members of your audience as it gives them the opportunity to interact with you and express their ideas but also discover how your ideas are going over or if they  clearly understood   Just remember to make good use of  open-ended questions  that will result in more complete answers beyond "Yes" or "No'.

In addition to such  questions,  you can quckly detect  those who are  not really listening by becoming familiar  with the meaning  of body language which can tell you whether a person has shut you out or is listening only half  heartedly.

Two of the more obvious of course are the person who is sitting or standingly  with his arms crossed in front of his chest with a beligerent or defiant look on his or her face or is  pretending to be listening but  is actually spending of of the time looking away from you.

Becoming adept at  reading your audience and be an invaluable skill  whether you are speaking to  one person  person or an audience of 100 or more as it enables to capture the interest of such ones by changing  the style of your delivery though pausing, or changes in the tone or volume of your voice in addition to adding more  interesting, anecdotes, illustrations, or examples -- or using  questions designed to draw them into the discussion.

Two very good books on  body language  are   People Wataching by Desmond Morris  and reading people  Jo-Ellan Dimitkirus, Ph.D.

Chop Chop Those Sentences

Chop Chop those long sentences. At least once in a while.   Not all long sentences are bad of course, but in order to provide variety and make your presentation  more conversational when writing it go back over your copy as use  what Mike Masterson in  the online journal, Early to Rise  calls, "the breath test".

This breath test means simply reading over your copy out loud to see which ones you can read without taking a second breath.  Some of the ones you can't should be cut or broken up.

You can do this by  rewriting the longer sentence to create two shorter ones or use dashes or  ellipses to break the sentence into two parts.

Gabriele Rico in her book  Writing the Natural Way can help you develop the skill to write in with a natural, rich variety. This will help to bring more life to y our writing and oral presentations.

Keep A Clip File

Do you find yourself often looking for  great anecdotes or illustrations to use  in interest arousing introductions to your presentations or to clarify a important point?


Read  your local and international  newspapers regularly.  They often contain bits of information that you can use with a wide variety of topics.


Just rip out the page the information is on and fold it so it close to the standard 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of typing paper and pop into your filing cabinet under different topics.


This clip file can also be enriched with other possible illustsrations or anecdotes you gather from other sources such as magazines , books, radio and television programs, as well as pictures you take with your cell phone or digital camera and  your own observations and experiences.


It can be a rich sourced of information that might also spark idea for your presentations as well.

Developing A Plesant, Clear Voice

When seeking to develop your speaking skills it is good to keep in mind how a clear, pleasent voice is created. 

It all begins with the air that your  lungs, acting like a bellows, push up through your windpipe into your larnyx or voice box.


Sounds begin to be formed as the air flows into the larnyx and hit the vocal cords -- two tiny folds of muscle on either sides of the larnyx.  In your normal breathing the air flows over these folds without making a sound. But when you speak muscles tighten these folds causing them to vibrate creating sounds.

As you continue to tighten these folds the cords vibrate  even more creating higher toned sounds and as you relax these cords the tone  deepens.

The sound wave created in the larnyx continue on through your throat it enters the upper throat or pharnyx and then the your mouth and  nasal cavity

There the miracle of speech is completed as the basic tones are refined and reinforced and then turned into understandable words by your tongue, jaw, teeth, and lips which break up the sound words to create speech.

So if you want to protect and develop a clear, plesant voice it is essential that you protect these powerful yet delicate parts of your throat and mouth by avoiding smoking and excessive consumption of alcohol and practice good oral hygiene.