Buidling Confidence

Speak Up and Speak Strong

Most people believe that they are, at least, good communicators; whereas they might be adequate most could probably be better. Whether the communication issue is written or verbal, whatever the skill it could be improved. For me the communication skill I would like to improve the most on is verbal communication. When I say verbal communication, I intend that to mean giving presentations. When it comes to one on one communications I feel that I am exceptional, but when I have a larger audience my voice weakens and I do not believe that I get my pointy across to the intended audience.

I have always been a very open, honest communicator and have learned from past experiences to tone down my ideological view and listen to others that had opposing views. I believe that to obtain cooperation from an audience one has to put aside their own personal agenda and temper what they say to appeal to the masses (Yankelovich, p 10). I know that my strong moral stance that demands transparency will come across to my intended audience once I work on the skills that will give me confidence.

I have always been aware of the utilization of proper language while speaking and have faulted many speakers for saying “umm” and “you know”. Not only do these fillers show lack of confidence they also are a distraction to the audience. This distraction constrains the audience from cognitively recalling the message in its entirety. As I discovered while researching the topic of speech I found my inner belief to be accurate as Fraundorf and Watson claim in the Journal of Memory and Language. Fraundorf and Watson conducted an experiment whereas Alice and Wonderland was read to subjects with fillers and discovered when they “ tested a processing time account of fillers' effects. While fillers facilitated recall, coughs matched in duration to the fillers impaired recall, suggesting that fillers' benefits cannot be attributed to adding processing time...