Very helpful blog (seriously)

I recently spoke at a Toastmasters meeting, and was criticized for using “right?” I used it at the end of a couple of sentences, and got nods from the audience when I did. In other words, I got audience agreement, which was why I used it.

So, in my opinion, it’s not a filler word. I used it with a purpose, and achieved my purpose. Hardly an um.

Any opinions on this?

One of the most distracting of them is saying and now, and now, and now for every connective.

At this point, not having read the book, it is going to be hard to wrap my mind around the idea that it could be good.

I have written about this and feel the pinnacle is being able to avoid, uh, using them.

http://www.speechmastery.com/word-whiskers.html

http://www.speechmastery.com/word-whisker-elimination.html

I say steer clear! These are surely words we do not want to give more power to.

On the notion of whether “um” distracts (which I see in a few comments here):
1. the scholarly evidence that filled pauses distract listeners from messages and taint a speaker’s credibility seems to come universally from university speech communication classes, so the sample is very biased to rating them negatively.
2. Some later psycholinguistic research has shown that listeners recognize words *faster* when they are preceded by an “uh” or “um” — that contradicts the notion that filled pauses are universally problematic in all speech acts.
3. In fact, all listeners do not attend to filled pauses. A certain proportion of listeners naturally attend to content; a certain proportion naturally attend to style. This will be hard to believe in a Toastmasters context, where you’re trained to listen for style — which means that TMers are unnaturally primed to listen for the “uh.” How it made its way into the TM program is something I describe in my book, in the chapter, “A brief history of ‘um.’”

There’s much more to say about this — and I did, in my book.

thanks,
Michael

[...] Andrew Dlugan has a post over at Six Minutes about whether filler words are actually detrimental: Are… um… Filler Words… ah… Okay?. It could be that it’s just a bad thing when it comes to Toastmasters. Although, I [...]

Filler words add nothing.

While it is true that one or two is not a killer, why not aim for zero.

Filler words are used essentially to keep talking when you’ve to give a little time to your mind to pop the next word you would utter. Practicing your speeches would be a great way to avoid using them but again, how often do we practice and talk? a better way is to notice and keep track of your fillers yourself. May be record when you speak and listen to it later.Once you become aware of your fillers, you’ll automatically reduce using them; that is, if you wish to be a good speaker.