When I first started teaching, I was an "um-er." You know, one of those folks who said "ummm" or "like," like, every other, ummm, word. I am also a fast talker - like, fast enough that words can get lost or garbled. My first real opportunity to spend any amount of time speaking in front of others was a part of my graduate teaching position in psychology (before I had any plans to become a teacher). Behavioral observation was part of my thesis! I knew my delivery needed to improve, and I really wanted to do better for the sake of the students in my course. I began to try and consciously track my "ummms" and "likes." There were a lot. Being aware of them helped me stop myself from letting as many pop out. I also make a conscious effort to slow down my speech.
I began teaching middle school and then as I moved on to student teaching (yeah, I did those out of order, that is for another blog post). I finally worked on slowing down when I speak, tracking my filler speech and being sure I was communicating in a way that all of my students could understand. I also recently discovered that much of my speech issues are the result of a language/fluency disorder called cluttering, which you can learn more about here. The rapid fire speech that words or syllables get lost it? The fillers and interjections? All of part of it. I am lucky in that my language delivery issues are pretty mild. A primary therapy is learning to monitor your own speech patterns, making conscious efforts to slow down appropriately. It has a genetic component, and is related to stuttering, something I remember my father struggling with a lot when I was younger.
Other than being told to "slow it down" or repeat myself, and my husband teasing me gently about some of my most-common slurred together words such as "juhmean" for "do you know what I mean?" no one had recognized that I had a language disorder, or that I worked to overcome it.
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