Many students who take our elocution lessons make the same mistake: they speak very fast and this results in a lot of pronunciation and punctuation mistakes. Fast speech can be difficult to listen to and irritating because the listeners cannot follow it. Even professional speakers such as TV presenters often make the mistake of speaking too fast. Slowing down is particularly important for public speakers.
There can be a number of reasons to speak fast. I will focus on the two obvious:
1. Feeling nervous. To overcome nervousness, we recommend that you take a couple of nice deep breaths to release the tension.
2. Fast brain
A fast brain is something people are born with, you cannot change it.
One may ask: can I learn to slow down and overcome my fast brain that forces me to speak fast?
I personally have the tendency to speak fast. In this blog post, I will share with you a simple yet very effective exercise that can help you to slow down.
Exercises:
1. When you speak, try to separate each idea of thought by using pauses. Count 1, 2, 3 in your head after each idea and allow yourself to breathe and relax. Don't link all ideas; don't deliver them all in one breath.
2. In a conversation with another person, make a pause after each question, do not jump on the answer straight away.
3. Read out loud using the punctuation. In your head, count 1,2,3 in place of a full stop, and count 1 in place of a comma. Make even longer pauses between paragraphs.
Conclusion
To slow down, be disciplined with pauses. Take a few elocution lessons and practise pauses with the app 4Ps, Power,Pitch,Pace,Pause.
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