To achieve this, while you are talking to people, you have to be sure of what you are saying. This will make you feel and look intelligent, as you are aware of what you say and how you make the other people feel. For a start, get rid of all the Um’s and the Like’s in your speech.
Words such as “um,” “uh,” are excessively common in our modern vocabularies. They go by many names such as disfluencies, distracters, credibility killers disrupters, and fillers. You won’t believe that they make about 20 percent of our day-to-day conversations, according to the researchers.
You lose credibility with such distracters
The bad news is, not only do all of those “um’s” and “ah’s” make you seem unintelligent, but they could also damage your credibility and distract your listener. By becoming more aware of them from now on, you can reduce those bad habits as they make you seem unintelligent and make people avoid you or distract themselves from you.
Reacting to the conversation is different. The bad habit is the time taken to think in the middle of the conversation. Such oral habits should be avoided to keep the listener intrigued.
What can be done?
You’ll need to know those must-follow secrets to make you seem instantly more intelligent. Listening to yourself or just taking note of your discussions can increase your awareness of your speaking habits, although you’ll never have the ability to banish filler words for good. Filler words come naturally, and all you can do is take note of your words and opinions. This will make you aware of yourself, the current situation, and you will not have to look for a filler word as the words will automatically come to your mouth.
Pay attention to how you speak, throw in a fancy word to cover all other conversational flaws. You can also practice speaking with some free audio editing software. While you listen to your words, pay attention to the disfluencies, and count them. Studies show, and researchers conclude that if you count the disfluencies till three or over, that means there are four filler words in your conversation. Scale back and correct them!
Now that you realize your recurring sin of disfluency, you can begin resisting the desire. You can even replace these words with more interesting transitional phrases such as “Let’s move on to” or “Another important consideration is”, either way, you’ll be on your way to a fluent, intelligent conversation in no time.
Note: When you make vocabulary changes or place a sentence out of the blue, make it all fluent. Fluency can make the person hold no grudge on the previous incomplete conversation.
In conclusion
You can start by practicing to identify your filling words by analyzing your speech. If you use more than three fillers, you can always try and work on them. In most cases, you can just replace it with a fancy word. Try jumping to another talk, but remember to be fluent.