Saturday, March 7, 1998 at 03:07:21

Fascinating page.  Have you researched ways or do you know of ways to minimize these FP's?

- JB

I have not researched ways of ridding one's speech of FPs.  However, I've been informed of several techniques via feedback to my site.  Several visitors to my site are members of Toastmasters International an organization dedicated to improving members' speaking skills.  One group uses an 'ah' counter to keep track of FPs, while another group rings a bell everytime a FP is uttered (i.e., negative reinforcement).  Both of these techniques may indeed reduce the FP rate, but I question whether they actually reduce the need for hesitation.  That is, the primary reason for using a FP is the need to stall for thinking time.  If an FP is not used then some other kind of hesitation will likely be used:  a silent pause, a restart, a reduction of speech rate, or a redundant tangent (paraphrase, rephrase, etc.).  These hesitations may not sound so irritable to listeners. Although it is interesting to note that the rate of communicating the *message* may still be the same...

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