Unless you are a robot or a very well-trained speaker, you will realise that as you are speaking during conversations, there will be "ers, erm, ah, ok, all-rights, lahs" in our speech.
This is normal. This is common. This is what toastmasters refer to as "Pause Fillers".
What are Pause Fillers?
Nature abhors vacuums and when you are speaking naturally, there will be times when there are pauses in your speech as you take a breath or as you think about something you are going to say before you say it. In this short few seconds or even mili-seconds, your voice utters a sound or sounds to fill in the emptiness that lies between our previous utterance and the next.
An example:
"I had always been an avid toastmaster for the last five years, because...er...yah, I enjoy speaking in front of audiences and..and.. therefore going to a toastmaster meeting thrills me..."
The "er..yah" (erms and ahs) in red and the "and...and" (repetition) are pause fillers. They add nothing to your speech except to make it less fluent and seem cluttered with unnecessary sounds.
Why do we utter pause fillers?
Pause fillers come in because we tend to be uncomfortable with silence, even as it is for a very short 1 or 2 seconds or less. Thus, the tendency for speakers is to fill that with sounds that do not value-add anything to the content nor form of your speech.
My personal experience with my own pause fillers when I started out even before I became a toastmaster. I remember doing a presentation of my social committee's proposal to organise the annual dinner and dance as I was the Chairman of this committee. There I was, bringing the senior management meeting through the proposal when the CEO cut me off saying, "Stop the lors and the lahs!"
I was both nervous in front of this senior group of people in my organisation as a junior staff just starting out my career in the organisation plus I was not an trained toastmaster then. Hence, I was having a lah or ler in my presentation which sounded Singlish and also was jarring to the CEO's ears.
That experience lingered in my mind until today and I can say confidently now that I speak better now than I did then because I am more aware of what my pause fillers do to my public communciation.
Negative impact of pause fillers
If you are serious about being a better public speaker either on a one-to-many or one-to-one situation, you have to be very conscious of pause-fillers because they can cause the following impact on your audience's perception of you:
1) Lacks confidence and appears unconvincing
If you are confident, your audience expects you to say what you want to say in a steady and coherent manner. The steadiness comes from choosing your words carefully and communicating them confidently to the audience without hesitation, unnecessary pauses and unnecessary pause fillers.
2) Appears unpolished and poorly prepared
Well prepared public speakers shouldn't be thinking of what they want to say. It should be at their fingertips (metaphorically) as pause fillers signify you are still thinking of what to say.
4) Jarring on the audience's ears
I don't know about you but pause fillers really makes my skin crawl... Especially when THEY ARE MINE! :-(
5) Appears untrustworthy
Some people associate pause fillers as those who are shifty and their views and opinions bend with the wind even as their words are not sure nor steady.
How to overcome pause fillers
1) Recognise that you have them
In order for you to overcome pause fillers, you need to first recognise that you do use them in your daily speech. In a typical toastmasters meeting, there will be a person taking up the role of an "ah-counter". The "ah-counter" is someone who will count your pause fillers so that you are made aware of how many you make in the course of the meeting. I recall during my very first few toastmasters meeting, I made easily 20-30 pause fillers during the course of doing a 4 to 6 or 5 to 7 minute speech.
It was only later when I became aware of the number of pause fillers in my speech.
2) Getting comfortable with pauses
The way to reduce your pause fillers is to be comfortable with short pauses in your speech. If you listen to speeches of important men and women, you will realise that many of them speak with gravity and with deliberate pace, pausing before major utterances to lend credibility to their spoken words. If you want to be like them, get comfortable with the natural pauses in your own speech.
3) Be well prepared
One of the other ways to overcome pause fillers is to be well prepared. When you are well prepared you will be confident enough with your material to field questions, deliver your speech and convince the audience of your message.
Let's overcome pause fillers by recognising it, getting comfortable with pauses and to be always well prepared for speaking opportunities.
Speak well and to live well.
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