It can be rather difficult to find a person who has an excellent speech without any flaws. Usually we have a lot of bad speaking habits that may cause different problems at work and in our everyday communication. That’s why we should work hard in order to eliminate certain errors from our speech. First of all, you need to discover your bad speaking habits and after fix them. If you are not a perfect speaker, you should spare no efforts to improve your speaking skills. These tips given below will help you sound fluent and eloquent. Try to practice them regularly and you’ll avoid undesirable mistakes in your speech.
1. Record Yourself
When I studied at the university, one of my professors always told us that it was necessary to record ourselves before giving a speech. I should say that method really worked. At first, I was surprised to find out that my voice on tape sounded absolutely different, not like in real life. Every time you hear your own speech you’ll be able to reveal your errors and you will not repeat them in the future. By practicing this technique you will have a nice opportunity to control your speech and it will motivate you to work at your speaking patterns.
2. Correct Your Grammar
It should be mentioned that grammar is one of the major aspects that influence our speaking habits. You can’t be a successful speaker if your grammar is poor. So, I would advise you to work on your grammar as much as possible. Perhaps, it will not be perfect, but you will manage to correct some mistakes. You should keep in mind that learning grammar is not an easy process. To succeed in it you need to spend a lot of time and to be patient. People who have correct grammar always sound well-educated. It’s up to you whether to master the basic grammar rules or to have bad speaking habits.
3. Consider Your Slang
Every language of the world has its own slang that usually varies depending on the area. As a rule, slang has a negative impact on language in general and on your speech in particular. Surely, it doesn’t mean you should completely erase slang from your vocabulary, just make sure you minimize its usage. By being persistent you will get rid of this bad habit in no time. Your results will be much better if you communicate with those who don’t use slang frequently.
4. Try to Avoid Fillers
To my mind this is one of the greatest mistakes we should avoid while speaking with others. Listen to the people who surround you every day and you will be amazed to hear an enormous amount of fillers in their speech. Definitely we must remove these harmful words from our vocabulary by all means. Very often you may use fillers without realizing it. Fillers don’t have their own meaning and if you omit them you won’t break the main idea of your speech. Such words as “like”, “well”, “ok” and lots of others are called fillers. We mostly use them when being nervous and unable to control our emotions. At such moments, we don’t pay much attention to what we are telling. I should admit that this bad speaking habit is really hard to cope with, but it’s possible to do that.
5. Cut out Cursing
If you can’t speak without cursing it’s your personal decision and you should understand that it will never make your speech better. People who don’t have cursing in their vocabulary are more pleasant interlocutors. Give up cursing and everybody will see that you are an intelligent and polite personality who respects others. There are some situations when you should forget about this sort of language. For example, it will be a bad idea to use cursing in the office or at the university because you are to be respectful and show your politeness at these places.
6. Be Careful with Your Pronunciation
Once you have decided to fix your speaking habits, you must be ready to work hard on your pronunciation as it is one of the key aspects that are necessary to develop your language skills. If your pronunciation is wrong you are expected to make more writing mistakes. It is typical of most people to write words in the same way as they speak. Accordingly, it is reasonable for you to observe your punctuation errors when you write. Learning the basic rules of punctuation is the most effective way to figure out what is right and what is wrong.
7. Improve Your Accent
Accent is something special that can tell much about you. For instance, when you go to another town you may even sound ridiculous there and everybody will understand that you are not a local. Do you have a strong accent? Then you need to take pains for correcting this speaking habit. Look for some extra help if you want to make progress soon. The Internet is an incredible source of information for you. Here you will be offered a great deal of useful recommendations.
Most of us have certain bad speaking habits and there are plenty of reasons due to which we should improve our speech. If you work hard on your speaking skills, you will eventually reach the desirable effect. What are the most common mistakes you make in your speech? Which of the above tips do you consider to be the most effective? If you have any other ideas, tell us please.