A friend of mine came up to me at the end of a seminar I gave a couple of months ago, and informed me that I ’um’ed 26 times in about 20 minutes. This was a bit of a shock, but then she told me that the other speakers in that session had ‘ums’ in the hundreds, for similar length talks.
This is a dangerous game. The speaker in the Departmental seminar just now scored 90 in 44 minutes.
I see. You erred on the conservative side.
Richard – there is a cure for verbal spam-noise.
When I was at Cambridge we had a maths lecturer who said ‘okay’ as verbal punctuation. At one lecture, the students started yelling a count each time he did it (i.e. the fifth time he said ‘okay’ everyone shouted FIVE) – strangely, he never did it again.
The best lecturer performance I saw was a physics lecturer in Cambridge who taught in the Cockroft lecture theatre, which had a large number of chalk boards in a horizontal line. He worked along, writing notes on a single line until reaching the right hand end and the sprinted left in a carriage return action before starting the next line.
Another good blackboard technique by a different lecturer was a straight arm chalk holding method. As the text descended the board, the lecturer lowered his body into a stoop, bent his knees, and eventually disappeared from view behind a bench leavin a disembodied arm writing on the board.
Great stuff.
The speaker in the Departmental seminar just now scored 90 in 44 minutes.
Sounds like a riveting seminar, then.
Um, great stuff, okay… :)
Mine is “so…” while I gather my thoughts for the next “paragraph”… my girlfriend takes the
pissMickey regularly. So…Before this scribbling, I was reminded of one of the greatest ways to un-confuse the audience at your next seminar.
Learn from the learned folks at Confuse-A-Cat Limited You simply just can’t go wrong.
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Mine is “ehh” as first noted after a presentation I gave in Washington DC in 2003. My US based chums took the piss citing the “fact” that I had I used “um”, the large audience would have understood me better. Sorry, I speak the way that I do.
I then noted that “etc.” was used way too often in an interview I did last year.
The best example I like personally, was Eddie Dyer, lead singer in our last band who cited ‘Bluestorm’, (name of band) roughly 90 times during our 30 min. set. Thankfully, two weeks later, the “n” dropped to less than a dozen after Eddie heard the data as can be heard on Urban Dilema
I’m with Graham, I think. (haven’t heard myself in a really long while…) Ehhh rather than um, but really euuueee ;)
it’s really annoying when you yourself realise you slip into it. That can render oneself into some kind of embarressed repetetive comments.
Media training works wonders for tics like this. If you can’t afford it, just video yourself talking and make yourself watch it. It’s amazing how quickly you’ll stop.
My tic, which I first noticed when I was on Sky News, was excessive blinking. I had no idea I did that – and now I don’t.
I tend towards “So,” and also “Now.” before a lot of my sentences.
Glasgow Uni used to run a public speaking course for graduate students in which they would tape every participant giving a talk, and then play all the tapes back for the group to critique. I can’t imagine anything worse… Luckily the course was not mandatory, and my supervisor said that I was already a good speaker and could find better uses for my time.
Yet another reason why I had The Supervisor Of The Century.
Knowing someone is counting does help.
make yourself watch it
sure. First class I took I had to restart …. the teacher just looked at me and said, I need to restart you. At the time I had my arms behind me…. let’s just say that was an enormously bad idea ;)
and yes, I squirmed alot when I saw how much I walked and stood and changed position and on top of that said ehhh… ummm…. eeeeuuu….
still, the biggest shock was to hear my own voice. I still can get surprised when I hear myself on a recording. Sounds sooooo different from what I think :)
…I first noticed when I was on Sky News
And today’s “Media Whore of the Week” award goes to…
excessive blinking. I had no idea I did that – and now I don’t.
I’ve heard that’s one of the most common ticks for people on telly the first time. You can even see it in new news anchors. A variation on a “deer in the headlights” I think…
the biggest shock was to hear my own voice. I still can get surprised when I hear myself on a recording. Sounds so[oooo] different from what I think
The first time I was interviewed by the BBC I found this too (Ha! Top that Rohn!). I listened to the playback and couldn’t believe it. Firstly I forget I have a British accent and it sounded so thick. plus I didn’t realise that I’m a bloody baritone! Although that might be more to do with the
604020 ciggies per day…