Speech 101

Post #29: dedicated to: Meet the Robinsons

I am a horrible public speaker.

Actually, that's not true...if I've got something memorized, I usually do okay. Usually. As long as I'm ultra aware of how fast I'm talking and slow it down.

But public reading? Reading books out loud? Reading passages of my essays out loud? I don't understand why I just can't do it.

I stumble over easy words, slur things together, mispronounce words I know I know how to pronounce, speak way too fast for the human race to understand.... I find myself constantly stopping to catch mistakes in my reading. It might sound wonderful when I'm reading to myself in my head - but when it's out there in the open, vibrations drifting away into listeners' ears, it's just not quite the same. It's horrible.

You'd think that for such an avid reader, speaking would come naturally.

Not so.