Presentation English: “ums” and “ahs”

July 22nd, 2005
by Cleve

Here’s a useful article from Steve Pavlina on eliminating verbal pauses: the “err”s and “ahhh”s that can derail your students’ presentations.

These no-content fillers are tough to eliminate for native speakers, especially given the pressure many people experience when speaking in public. And as every Business English teacher knows, it’s even tougher for our students, who often need to be mentally scanning (consulting the monitor) for vocabulary or a structure. Here are two ideas that we’ve used to help our students:

Idea #1: Build awareness
Pavlina emphasizes that the first step towards reducing this tendency is speaker awareness of these pauses. He notes that in his Toastmaster group one person in the audience is designated the “ah counter” who gives every speaker the number of fillers used. He says that the aahhs in his presentations have dropped from 10-20 down to 0-2 since the measurement started.

So, 2 points here for BE teachers:
1) The management truism “what gets measured gets improved”: when practicing a presentation with a student, count the aahhs.
2) Learner awareness is key. As a part of learner training, performance awareness is critical to progress and learner autonomy.

Idea #2: Get help from the audience
I know about these fillers first-hand from delivering presentations in Spanish. My Spanish is just under an ALTE C1 (at least on good days) and I’m more fluent than accurate, but I still get hung up with certain structures or searching for the right phrase when making presentations.

When this happens, I have a technique I use (and have recommended successfully to many students): I ask the audience for help. When I notice that I’m pausing to think of a word or structure, I ask the audience immediately for the translation (so far there’s always been someone in the audience who can provide it). The audience is delighted to help and the communicative rapport is strengthened. We move from a speech to a two-way conversation; the audience is participating and energy goes up.

Caveats: This can’t be over-used. It doesn’t replace true “conversation” in a presentation. Watch carefully to assure positive audience reaction. It’s only appropriate for less formal presentations with audiences up to 50 or so. It won’t work with every presentation “style”.

If you try these techniques, let us know how it goes.

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