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To say a toast at a family holiday or corporate party, shoot a video for a blog, or just convey your idea to your interlocutors – is it easy for you? If not, then know that it’s not so difficult to pump up the skills of spontaneous speech. These 7 tricks from a speech consultant will help you speak easily and vividly even in the most unexpected situations.
When I find myself at a family holiday, corporate party or coffee break, I almost always notice that at least 7 out of 10 people avoid spontaneous communication, and even more so the need to say something to the public offhand. Even if the “public” consists of a couple of people.
They’d rather pour themselves some tea, check their messengers, consult notes on their phone, or listen to someone else with pleasure… Anything to avoid getting into an awkward situation! People are often embarrassed about their speech and choose what they think is a more reliable strategy for their image: silence.
“I’d rather be silent…”
“In general, I’m not stupid, I’m not backward, I read smart books,” a participant of the training once shared with me, “but I usually keep quiet at a corporate party or at some meeting. If I open my mouth, it turns out some kind of nonsense: I wind around in topics, confuse endings, and at the most inopportune moment I will definitely forget some necessary word and stop. I feel ashamed of myself.”
Spontaneous speech is one of the most difficult forms of communication. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it is born simultaneously with thoughts. That is, the speaker is forced to think and speak at the same time: generate a thought and at the same moment “package” it, select words and the necessary speech constructions.
When we are evaluated, our words are meaningful and we are shackled by the time frame – this becomes a problem.
At such moments, we feel a lack of time, and most people react to it with stress. As a result, under such conditions, a thought is lost or the form of its expression suffers: we pronounce unnecessary words, pause and make mistakes.
Once US President and brilliant speaker Woodrow Wilson once said: “If I speak for 10 minutes, I need a week to prepare. If it’s an hour, then I’m ready to start right now.”
In everyday communication, reservations, understatement, illogical judgments are excusable. But as soon as we find ourselves in a situation where we are evaluated, when our words are meaningful, when we are shackled by the time frame, all these shortcomings become a problem. To solve it, you will have to make an effort.
The role of the emotional state of a person
Spontaneous speech is often taken as a literacy test. When a person says something without preparation, he demonstrates his skills. But the idea that spontaneous speech reflects the true level of development of speech skills is only partly true.
Failures, disturbances in speech also occur against the background of strong emotions. Therefore, in order to improve his spontaneous speech, it is important for a person to learn how to set himself up for a speech.
7 Ways to Improve Your Spontaneous Speaking
1. Learn to relieve emotional stress. Stress negatively affects cognitive abilities. Due to strong emotional stress, a person may have difficulty speaking: he forgets words, cuts off his thoughts. There are many pauses and reservations.
Relaxation techniques (for example, conscious breathing) will help to correct the situation, as well as cognitive-behavioral therapy, which allows you to work with your fears and anxieties at the time of spontaneous communication and performances.
2. Cultivate interest. Interest is an emotion that increases our tone: it increases motivation and helps to cope with negative thoughts that inhibit speech and thought processes. Try to find in the course of the conversation something that can captivate you. It can be an interlocutor or his position, a topic of discussion, an interesting word or metaphor, a search for ideas, an opportunity to compete.
Intentionally switch yourself from anxious thoughts (“I won’t succeed”, “I will definitely say something wrong or forget the words”) to a state of interest (“Yes, the situation is difficult, but I’m even interested in how everything will turn out”, “ I’m curious to try a new instrument”, “it’s interesting to observe the reaction of the interlocutor”).
3. Use speech patterns and formulas. The vulnerability of spontaneous speech is the difficulty with the construction of phrases. No wonder it is called “winding”. Due to lack of time, the speaker often cuts off his statement, moves away from the topic. The logic and structure of the oral text suffer.
The use of formulas – structural and semantic models of speech – helps to improve the quality of spontaneous speech. Their knowledge and constant application reduces the time to create the necessary designs and helps to “fill in” thoughts into ready-made samples.
What is a formula? For example, we know that the congratulation scheme includes an appeal, congratulations and wishes. The proof scheme consists of alternating theses and arguments.
If a person has a sufficient number of speech formulas in his arsenal, usually at the very beginning of his speech, he generally understands what the structure of his statement will be. This greatly facilitates the speech process itself, and the speaker feels much more confident.
4. Learn to choose words, expand your active vocabulary. In spontaneous speech, we retrieve words from memory, and this can be difficult. When the speaker fails to find the right term, there are awkward pauses or extra words in the conversation.
To reduce the number of such hitches, it is important to work on your active vocabulary – the set that you often use in your speech. For example, choose synonyms or epithets for words.
5. Expand your library of personal stories and comments. Spontaneous speech is not created from scratch. In it you can find texts or statements that we said earlier. It can be stories, quotes, explanations…
They often act as supports that help the speaker reduce effort and time. They also give the speaker a break in the conversation, the opportunity to gather his thoughts. In order for the text to turn into such a “record” that can be turned on at any time, it must be played at least 2-3 times in advance.
If you want to communicate easily and naturally, you need to be on your side.
6. Think about meaning. When a person is dissatisfied with his speech or doubts it, he is usually worried about many technical questions: “What to say?”, “How to say?”, “How to respond?”
Most of these questions resolve themselves as soon as a person asks himself questions with a deeper meaning: “Who am I in this dialogue (client, partner, coach)?”, “What is my goal in the conversation?”, “What do I want to come to? »
7. Work with negative beliefs. “When I listen to myself, it seems to me that I speak so primitively that the ears of those around me probably wither!” We often think of our speech in similar ways. It is important to remember that clearly articulated dissatisfaction with speech (for example, “I don’t like what I say too quickly”) helps us improve.
But non-specific value judgments about ourselves and our speech lead to the opposite effect: we get lost, worried, afraid to communicate, our speech and mental abilities deteriorate.
Spontaneous speech, especially in stressful situations, always creates extreme conditions for the speaker. And if you want to communicate easily and naturally, you need to be on your side.
An unusual environment, a difficult interlocutor, a dispute, an increased significance of the effects of the upcoming conversation – this is an important reason to pay attention to your condition and tune in to the conversation. And speech failures are an opportunity to once again look at speech as a zone of one’s proximal development.
Irina Medvedeva is a psycholinguist, speech coach and consultant, and author of Speak Right to Yourself: How to Deal with Your Inner Critic, Become More Confident, and Feel Supported Within Yourself. Her .