Sunday, July 20, 2008

Aah, Umm

An advantage of joining ToastMasters club (I'm sorry for too much posts on Toastmasters these days, but I'm getting so much involved that I can't resist talking about it :) ) is that there are people who would evaluate you and give constructive feedback. One of the feedbacks that one receives is the number of times speaker utter filler words such as 'Umm, Aah, annnddddd ...'. During my prepared speech, I didn't utter a single filler word. This probably happened because I was prepared and didnt forget anything during the speech. However, during all my impromptu speeches, I got a feedback that I say these words close to 4-5 times. Impromptu speeches last for only 1-2 minutes and so much usage of filler words would definitely wont categorize someone as a good speaker.

Nowadays, I take a lot of care while speaking English with my teammates during meetings or conference calls. But then one day, while talking to my family on phone, I realized that I falter as well as stumble while speaking in Hindi as well. This is a good realization as I now believe that without getting this corrected first, it will take a lot of time for me to gain expertize in English. I believe that the path would be much more easier and glib this way rather than jumping into the English territory first.

So, I'm gonna try this first and get my basics right.

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