5 Tips to Speak Clearly Without Stumbling on Words

Do you struggle to speak clearly or to pronounce your words without stumbling on your words? In this video, I'm going to share with you five easy and simple tips on how to speak clearly without stumbling on your words. And the way that I'm going to share these tips is going to be very special. I'm going to use the acronym DELVE, D-E-L-V-E. So each tip that I'm going to give today is going to start with one of those letters. So come for a walk with me. We are in Coal Harbor in Vancouver. It's a beautiful day outside. It's funny beginning to feel like spring. So let's walk and let's go. The first tip is to discover. What are you discovering? You're discovering your natural pace. Everybody speaks at a natural pace and some people are faster talkers. Some people talk slower naturally. If you have listened to my YouTube videos, you will have noticed that I tend to speak faster than average, but that's my natural pace, right? The one reason, the biggest reason why people find themselves stumbling in their speech is because they are talking faster than what their natural pace is. So the trick is, the first tip is for you to discover, what is that natural pace, right? And your pace comes from the way that you learn, right? Because there are three different types of learners. We've got the visual learners, we have the audio learners and we have the kinesthetic learners. And if you are visual like me, then you tend to learn by seeing. You tend to say things like, do you see what I said, right? Do you see that? Do you see it that way, right? We tend to use words like that and we tend to have a faster pace. We tend to make bigger gestures when we speak, right? And so if you are visual, then your pace may be faster. If you are audio, then it is a little slower, right? People who are audio learners, they tend to take more pauses. And then the third one is kinesthetic, people who are kinesthetic. They like to say things like, do you feel me, right? Do you feel what I'm saying? And kinesthetic learners tend to take even more pauses. They are slower in their speech. So discover for yourself, what is your natural pace? Embrace that pace and don't go faster than your natural pace because when you do, that's when you find yourself stumbling on your words because you are trying to talk faster than what you normally can talk at, what your normal pace is at. So just embrace your pace, discover what that is for you. You can experiment talking faster, a little bit slower, and just embrace that pace. Stay at that pace until you feel like that is where you are at and you find yourself stumbling a lot less. So the first tip is to discover your pace. The second tip is to exercise. In this exercise, we're not doing pushups or sit ups or anything like that. In this one, you are exercising your tongue. And the reason why you're exercising your tongue is because your tongue is a muscle. It's a muscle exactly like the biceps in your arm, the quadriceps in your legs, your abs. It's a muscle exactly like that because your tongue is a voluntary muscle, which means that you have voluntary, you have conscious control over your tongue, how it moves, where it moves, when it moves, right? So you want to exercise your tongue. And the reason why tongue exercises are very important is because you want to strengthen your tongue muscles. Your tongue is one of the most important muscles in speech. And there's two elements when you are using your tongue. There's two elements you want to pay attention to. There is the pronunciation and there is enunciation. So what's the difference? Pronunciation is like word based, right? It is the stresses in each syllable of the word. It is the emphasis. It is the tones that go up and down. For example, if I were to say the word education, I'm going to emphasize the third syllable education. And when I emphasize the third syllable, you'll notice that the tone raises education, education, right? And so that is pronunciation. It is dependent on each word. Enunciation is different. Enunciation is how all the words come together in your flow of speech. It is your ability to intonate the ups and downs, the rising, the highs and lows of the pitch and the tone that you use, the vocal variations, the modulations of the sentence that you speak. And it also incorporates the pace at which you speak, which we talked about earlier, right? And you have to, all of those come together to be able to speak clearly. So pronunciation and enunciation work together. Enunciation is dependent on how you as a speaker pronounce each word and string the words together to make it understandable to your audience. So the reason why you're exercising your muscle is because think of it like this. Pronunciation is macro, sorry, pronunciation is micro. It's the words, right? Enunciation is macro. It's the whole speech. It is the sentences and the figures and the segments of speech that you are speaking. So when you are exercising your muscle, you are going to be able to refine both your pronunciation and your enunciation. I'm going to give you some of the best tongue exercises you can do that will help you to make those improvements, right? It comes from three sounds. The first sound is R, R. And when you say R, your tongue rolls up like this, R, right? And then the second exercise is S, S. And when you make the S sound, your tongue has a little dip in the front, kind of like this, but you're putting it at the back of your two front teeth, S, right? And the third exercise is TH, the TH sound. If you don't have a voice to it, then it's TH. If you add your voice to it, it sounds like the, like the, or think, think, the. It's still the same sound, but one of them, you're adding your voice. So it makes the, the, it makes that vibrational sound. So if you practice the tongue exercises associated with those three sounds, R, S, TH, right? What you're doing is you are practicing the movement of your tongue and it becomes unconscious competence. You know where your tongue has to be, when the shape it has to be in, when you move it, how quickly you can move it from transitioning to R, S, TH, how fast you can transition. That also affects your pace and your ability to speak at a pace that's not too slow, but not overly fast. And you're still not going to stumble on your words, right? So the second tip is to exercise your tongue. The third tip is listen. Who are you listening to? You're listening to your audience. If you are speaking one-on-one, then you are listening to the person that you are speaking with. If you are speaking one-to-many or from an audience or from a meeting room, then you are listening to the people who are in your audience. And the reason why you want to listen, because part of the most important part about speaking is listening. And the reason why you want to listen is because your audience is going to give you the content that will help you to be able to deliver the communications in the way they want to receive it. The whole purpose of speaking clearly is not speaking clearly for you. It's speaking clearly because your audience is the one that's going to vote whether or not it was clear and whether or not it was understandable, right? And the purpose of communication is for your audience. You're not communicating to yourself. You're communicating with someone else. So their perception is the most important because they're going to be the ones that are voting if they understood you. They're the ones that are going to be voting and giving you feedback on whether or not you were clear or whether or not your ideas came across or whether or not you expressed yourself in a way they could understand, right? So listen to your audience. They will tell you the language that they are using. They'll tell you the language that what they're thinking in their head. And so therefore when you give your communication, when you respond, when you engage with them, that is when you can use the conversation that's already happening in their mind because they're going to tell you, you use their language, right? You look at their speech patterns and you respond similarly, right? Mirror, you match, you mirror and you use their language and that will help you to be perceived more clearly, to be understood and to be received as well in your message. So the third step is to listen. The fourth tip, and by the way, if you are serious about getting the support and some help in order to elevate your communication and you are serious about getting these results for yourself, then I invite you to work with me, right? As your coach and as your mentor, I'll give you the strategies, I'll take you by the hand and I'll show you how you can improve exponentially. So if you're serious about getting that coaching and that mentorship, then I invite you to click the link below. The link is below this video is the first link that you'll see. And that is your opportunity to apply, to see if you qualify to work with me as your coach. Okay, so the fourth step is to vocalize. This is where you are vocalizing your content because what you are saying, the things that you are delivering, that is your content. So have something good to say, say it well and say it often. Because when you say it often, that is when you will really connect to the truth that you're going to speak anyway, your content is going to be the truth. And when you connect to the truth and you say it often, all of a sudden you don't have to memorize a lot of information anymore because that's your truth and you will have the practice you need and you'll have the exercise you need to be able to vocalize it often and learn from the feedback loop from your audience, what worked and what didn't work, right? So the fourth tip is to vocalize. We are on the last tip. And if you have stuck with me so far and what I have said resonated with you, then I invite you to click the link below, ring that bell, subscribe to my channel so you can be notified every time that I upload a new video. And I upload videos every week on topics like this where I go deep into communications and articulation and other topics as well. So I invite you to subscribe to my channel. So the fifth and the final tip is to empower. You are empowering your audience, right? There's a difference between speaking to be heard and speaking to enroll. When we are speaking to be heard, that's when we start to want to be heard, right? We start to emphasize our points. We start to be a little bit more emphatic. We start to put the focus on us because we want to be heard. We want to be heard. We want them to hear us. We want them to understand us, right? And so when we speak to be heard, that is when we have the most propensity to stumble on our words because we are making it about ourselves. We're stumbling on our words because we want to impress, we want to be heard, right? Versus if you speak to enroll, speaking to enroll means you are making it about them because the whole point of communication is to engage them, is to inspire or educate, is to get them to take an action, the most positive action that will influence their life or influence the business or influence their actions, right? And so when you speak to enroll, you are enrolling them to have a specific outcome. So that requires you to have an intention for your communication piece, right? So when you speak to enroll, don't speak to impress, right? Don't speak to be heard. Instead, speak to enroll. And that is how you empower your audience. And in so doing, when you make it about them, all of a sudden the words will flow because it is not about you and how impressive you are. It is about how you can speak and what you can say in order to make the most positive changes in their life.