5 Bad Speech Habits To Avoid

hey what's up Stefanie the english coach here from

EnglishFullTime.com in this video i'm gonna give you

five bad speech habits that i recommend avoiding and i also have a bonus tip for

you so here's the deal as you guys are

learning english you are imitating native speakers you want to

sound fluent in english and so you listen you listen

very closely and you imitate what you hear now the point of

this video is that not everything you hear is worth

imitating there are some bad speech habits that native speakers have

probably in all languages and these are things that you don't

necessarily want to imitate or at least i don't recommend

imitating them so we will go through this list but before we do that i just

want to let you guys know that my team and i

are preparing a really cool program for you to help with all aspects of your

english your listening your speaking vocabulary

grammar pronunciation etc it is going to be super affordable and

actually by the time this video goes live we may have already opened

this program i'm not sure so check in the description

i will give you guys all the information there i am super excited about it

and i know you guys are going to love it okay so

uh without further ado let's talk about these five

speech habits bad speech habits plus the bonus that i recommend you

avoid okay so the first one is speaking too

quickly now as you're learning english you might

think oh my goodness i need to speak fast because if i speak fast i will be

fluent and people will respect me as an english

speaker you want to fit in with other english speakers maybe who are speaking

quickly i actually wrote about this on my

twitter recently sometimes you might feel like you have

to speak super fast to prove yourself as a competent english

speaker but let me tell you good communicators

don't speak a mile a minute they are more

concerned with their message coming across

clearly and being understood so that is the gist of this idea when you

speak so fast and if you have a heavy accent

on top of that and if you're still struggling with

pronouncing certain sounds and certain words that could really make your speech

very unclear and difficult to understand so i

recommend avoiding it and i also want to tell you a quick

story about a student that i spoke with a couple years ago

i did a coaching call with him and he was fluent in english he spoke very well

he was studying in the usa but he spoke so

fast like his words would just run together in a sentence

and i was there thinking like why are we talking so fast what's the hurry

and i asked him about it i'm like you know you're speaking really

really fast like why do you speak like this and basically

he told me that his friends in college all spoke like that he had friends and

they would play basketball together and his friends would speak very fast

and this is actually something that a lot of native speakers

do especially younger people tend to do this

they speak very very quickly however when you speak like that

it's not always easy for other people to understand so he just wanted to

fit in he wanted to be like his friends and like the people he was hanging out

with but it actually worked against him because

one the conversation that i had with him felt very rushed

and we were talking about important topics we were talking about his english

his goals his career etc and that's not a conversation you

want to rush and beyond that it was difficult for me

to understand him so there are times to speak quickly or

phrases that maybe you want to say quickly but overall you don't want your

speech to be super rushed because your goals should be

communicating clearly and being understood remember

that is what good speakers focus on okay the next bad

speech habit that you want to avoid is the overuse of fillers fillers are

words like you know like um etc

so using these words once in a while can be okay

because they help you connect your sentences and ideas in a natural native

like way however the overuse of fillers

is very distracting to your listener and it can get very annoying

if someone is using you know you know it's like you know

um you know all the time in their speech you're gonna be like oh my goodness

get to the point what are you trying to say just say it

okay so like i said these are bad habits that native speakers have

and you might want to imitate them thinking

hey if i do this then i will sound more like a native speaker

okay but this is like i said these are bad habits so sometimes i

overuse the phrase you know and i probably pick this up from my mom

because she does this as well and sometimes Ren has to call me on it

and he says hey Stefanie can you please just stop using your nose so much and i

tend to do this when i am explaining an idea

that i have not fully thought about in my mind and i don't

know exactly what i think so when i'm communicating the idea

i'm like you know it's like you know and i'm not thinking first

and then speaking i'm trying to think and speak at the same time

and that's why it comes out like that so it's often a better idea to

think first know what you think and feel and then

communicate and i do have a story for this one

as well one time i interviewed a brazilian woman

she was from brazil but she spoke other languages like spanish and english and

she spoke them so well she sounded like a native

speaker in every single language and the cool thing was she learned these

languages as an adult and it's very rare to meet people like

this so of course being the english coach i was

like hey can i interview you that would be so awesome and she said yes

so we did the interview and i wanted to share it with my students

unfortunately she used you know so much in the interview that it was

incredibly distracting and even when we edited the video

to try and take it out all that did was make the video super choppy so i never

actually got a chance to share it with my students it was

way too distracting and i felt like i couldn't really use the interview

now in her defense maybe she was a little nervous

about being interviewed and sometimes we tend to use fillers more when we

are nervous but it's just something to be aware of try not to use it when

you're nervous try not to use it when you're not nervous

use it the appropriate amount of time um don't annoy people with it okay the next

bad habit that i recommend avoiding is using

offensive language and cursing or rather the overuse

of cursing and using offensive language especially if you do not talk like this

in your native language so depending on what kind of

content you consume maybe in your native language you don't really curse you

don't really use offensive language but maybe you're following all these

vloggers that do or maybe you have friends at school that do talk like this

and so you feel oh well the people i'm around talk like this and

you feel like you want to fit in so you start talking like that

and it just doesn't feel like you okay plus by using this language it can get

you into trouble if you are a professional and you're

using this language in an interview or something like that

you know maybe you're not going to get hired so you have to know

what type of language is appropriate for what situation and you have to be

really really really careful with offensive language because one of the

last things you learn as a language learner

is the connotation of words how it makes other people feel the feelings behind

words okay so not just the word and the definition but

the attitudes associated with the word that other people might have so for you

to say something that might be really offensive like the

n word which i'm not going to say you might think nothing of it right

but for other people that could really be offensive

and you just want to be careful how you portray yourself and again

if you're not like this in your native language and you find that you're

surrounded with native speakers who do talk like that

don't feel pressured to be someone you are not

um i guess i have a story for this one as well i just remembered this when i

was in eighth grade i went to a school where the culture

and the community people around me they were very different from

me and the way that i was raised for example i was raised in a household

where we never cursed and we avoided using all types of offensive

language however at this school apparently the other kids were raised in

the opposite environment where it was totally okay

to use offensive language and to curse and so i started feeling pressured like

everyone is doing this around me so i should do it too so that i fit in

however it did not feel right and i remember that feeling that icky feeling

of this isn't who i am why am i trying to

be somebody that i'm not and so finally by ninth grade

i realized you know what that's not who i am that's not how i was raised

i don't believe in talking like that and so i'm not going to

do it okay now that's not to say that i never curse or anything like that i do

but i believe that that language is meant to be used sparingly if you

overuse it it kind of loses its meaning and its emphasis

so just something to consider okay the next

bad habit that i recommend avoiding is mumbling

so you might hear native speakers and maybe it's your neighbor

someone you go to school with someone you work with and they just mumble and

you think okay that's how i should talk because i'll

sound more like a native if i do that but

mumbling is a problem because when you mumble we can't understand what you're

saying a lot of the times i remember i guess i have a story for all of these

oh my goodness this is so funny i didn't plan the stories but they are just

coming out so anyways i have a brother-in-law who tends to

mumble a lot when he speaks now i've practically grown up with him in

our family because my sister got married when i was very young she was a lot

older and i'm used to the way he speaks so

it's not a problem for me however when i met

and married Renzo and Renzo met him Renzo would look at me

and be like what is he saying oh my goodness it was always such

a mystery what my brother-in-law was saying because

he would mumble and so that was really hard for Ren to understand now if

you mumble okay and on top of that any struggle you may have with

pronunciation uh your accent if people are not accustomed to it okay it's gonna

make it very difficult for people to understand

you and as someone who is communicating you want to be understood

okay you want people to listen to your ideas to value your ideas

and so that's why i recommend avoiding mumbling okay the next bad speech habit

that i recommend avoiding is speaking too loud

or too soft too quietly okay you really want to know what the appropriate

volume is for where you are at and some people have a habit of speaking really

loud when they are in environments when they should not be

speaking that loud or they're very timid and so they speak

so softly that you can't hear them right so you want to be able to adjust your

voice according to the environment that you're

in now as a non-native speaker sometimes you might feel a little bit

shy like oh i don't know if i should speak up and so you're really quiet and

i want to encourage you to use your voice and to practice

finding that power in your diaphragm okay to really

support your voice so that you are heard and so that you command attention and

you say hey i have an idea and it's a good idea and

i want to share it and it's worth listening to okay so

that is the kind of volume you want to use now obviously you don't always want

to use that volume it depends what situation you're in

but you just want to be aware of it and i have a little bonus tip related to

this and then i have my big bonus tip okay so my bonus tip

about volume is not reducing the volume at the end of your sentences this is a

very very bad habit that people have and a lot of

people do this when they lack confidence okay so the recommendation is

maintain the volume of your sentence throughout your entire

sentence from start to finish start your sentence strong and end your

sentence strong of course you can vary the pitch and the tone and the volume a

little bit throughout your sentence so that you

don't speak in a monotone boring way but overall do not start your sentence

up here and end it down here okay because again a

lot of people do this when they lack confidence both native speakers and

non-native speakers and they might say something like oh

i was thinking that um maybe you know we should just

whatever and then the sentence just trails off

and it's like do you want people to hear you

or not because if you do if you really do

you can't do that you have to be aware of it and you might have to work on your

own mindset to really get that confidence to

start your sentence and finish it with the same

level of power and volume i know that i have done this and sometimes i even

maybe still do it as a spanish speaker okay and whenever i wasn't sure if i was

saying a word correctly or if my grammar was you know incorrect

in a sentence and i wasn't sure i would start the sentence strong

because i really wanted to share an idea and then it would just trail off

um because i was shy and embarrassed okay

so again be confident even if you are saying something and you're like i might

be pronouncing this wrong i might be messing up the grammar just say

it and embrace the journey as you go and all the mistakes

and have fun with it just don't hold back i guess is what i'm saying and when

you let your sentence trail off like that

it's because you're holding back rather than

letting it all out and being confident okay so my final tip my bonus tip and

probably the biggest most important tip of this entire video

is do not imitate without considering the attitude behind

what you are imitating okay so here's what i mean

you might hear a native speaker speaking in a certain way

and you imitate them word for word exactly what they say

as they say it and the tone you have spot on and it might be great you might

sound like wow she sounds like a native speaker he

sounds like a native speaker that's awesome

but what you don't realize is the native speaker that you're imitating is

actually being rude or condescending or patronizing or

impatient or maybe they are being dismissive or

judgmental or sarcastic okay and these are not great characteristics

and qualities when it comes to speaking and communicating okay these are things

that are offensive and it's up to you how you want to

communicate but of course i teach my students to not

communicate at that level and i teach professional communication and

communication that is just kind and considerate and gets good

results or better results for you so again just because you hear

a native speaker speaking in a certain way don't just

imitate blindly thinking okay that's how native speakers talk i want to sound

like that really listen to the tone that they're

using listen to the words that they're using

listen for exaggeration listen for these negative things

and ask yourself do i want to communicate like this how do i want to

be seen as an english speaker how do i want

people to perceive me because i will tell you that their

people communicate in different ways and depending on if they're having a good

day or not or what their personality is or their

character is like some people communicate in these

negative ways and you have to be aware of it and

i actually know someone in my life who in english when she communicates she

communicates very well and she comes across as kind

in spanish when she communicates she often comes across as very

bossy very rude very patronizing and i don't think she even realizes and

i don't think she knows that she comes across like this because

she can't hear herself but i think what happened is she worked so hard to

imitate the spanish that she was surrounded with

and she didn't really realize that the people that she was surrounded with

were being patronizing and rude and impatient

and dismissive and since she didn't make that connection

she ended up adopting that way of speaking

and i mean hopefully one day she will realize but it's a very sensitive topic

so it's not like i'm just gonna come out and be like hey

did you know you come across like this when you speak in this language so

anyways this is why i'm taking everything that i

learned from my experience and my students experiences

and just my observations and i'm sharing it with you and i really hope it makes a

difference in your life and i hope it gives you

something to think about and consider okay so with all of that said i just

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video that's it i'll see you soon bye

And what was the other thing hang on

i always have these thoughts in my head and then getting them into the video i

it's like i forget as i go um there was another reason why speaking fast was a

uh not a good thing oh i wrote about this

on my twitter what did i what did i say and i

tend to uh how do i say this and i know hang on

and okay so anyways um i have a brother-in-law who tends to

mumble when he speaks

okay there was a car hopefully he didn't hear that okay okay the next bad speech

habit that i avoid recommending wait

i can't believe i just said that i'm tired it has been a long day

oh my goodness okay

but what you don't realize is the native speaker that you're imitating is

actually being rude or condescending or patronizing or

impatient or i have some others on the list

what is it maybe they are being dismissive

hang on dismissive okay maybe they are being dismissive

or judgmental i can't remember these maybe or maybe they are being dismissive

or judgmental or okay sarcastic

that's the one how do i want people to perceive me

if you want a that more i don't know personal

how should i say this

points for me for being prepared