How To Speak Clearly So That Others Understand You: 5 Tips
There are people who, regardless of how much they like to talk, They have problems making themselves understood when they do it.
For many people, the ease of expressing themselves comes spontaneously and naturally, while for others it is something a little more complex, a task that requires a greater degree of concentration and voluntary control of speech and the message that is transmitted. It is normal, each individual has his/her strengths and imperfections. In this article we will focus precisely on the difficulties when communicating verbally. How to speak clearly and be understood?
Language makes us capable of describing almost any real or imagined phenomenon and makes other people able to understand the meaning of what we say. It sounds ordinary, but it is actually extraordinary: basically, we are able to transmit very precise information and, furthermore, introduce “mental images” or ideas into the mind of the person listening, the interlocutor.
What makes this ability unique is that we can adapt our words, our phrases, and our speech in general to the circumstances, taking into account not only the content of what we want to say but also the way in which the context can modify or give meaning to what is said. It can be said that all the spoken or written messages we emit are unique, because the contexts in which they are created are also unique.
However, this adaptive, dynamic and fluid nature of language It also makes it relatively easy for confusion and misunderstandings to arise.
Tips on how to speak clearly and be understood
We all sometimes make a mistake when expressing ourselves or when interpreting what we read or hear, and these errors are, to a certain extent, shared by the sender and the receiver (except in the case where we are tried to cheat, of course).
In any case, there are those who are especially prone to generating, involuntarily, difficult to interpret messages that usually cause misunderstanding. The following tips for speaking clearly can help you improve in this aspect, since the use of language is something learned and modifiable through appropriate training.
Of course, this series of tips are aimed at helping with the psychological and behavioral aspect of education. If the basis of the problem is an organic alteration of the parts of the body responsible for articulating speech, whether based on muscles, bones or specific areas of the nervous system (brain included, of course). In these types of cases, the best possible solution necessarily involves the doctor and the guidelines that they give you as a patient from that area.
1. Speak more slowly
This first step is not only advice in itself that will help you speak more clearly; It will also make it easier for you to follow the rest of the advice. It consists not so much of placing pauses here and there in your speech, but of generally slowing down your way of speaking, that is, it should affect all the words you pronounce, to some extent. Test at home to make sure you don’t reach a level of slowing that feels artificial. He thinks the key is consistency. Trying it just once or allowing too much time to pass between sessions will not help much.
Keep in mind that slowing down your speech doesn’t have to be a bad thing from the perspective of those listening to you. There are people who almost always speak relatively slowly and, although in some contexts it may attract a little attention, in others it is even positive, because If it is a well-used resource, it adds importance to what is said and gives a certain authority.
In any case, this step does not have to mark your way of speaking indefinitely, but as we have already mentioned, it is rather an aid to facilitate familiarization with the rest of the tips.
2. Avoid strange references
Many times, communication problems arise because in order to express ourselves we use references unknown to the other person. This happens especially when talking to people who do not belong to our closest social circle or who have a cultural background very different from ours.
The main problem is that in these situations the reference to a book or a movie, for example, does not even have to be understood as such. This creates very confusing situations in which the other person does not know exactly what has been said to them, nor how to respond, since they lack clues to interpret our intentions when saying that, or even if we have said what we wanted or we have had a confusion of words.
Consequently, it is advisable to be guided by the information we have about our interlocutor to estimate more or less which cultural areas he or she has more or less knowledge of and, from there, use references, since we should not give up using this resource in our conversations (since they enrich the dialogues and make them stimulating).
Of course, in any case, you have to pay attention to, right after using them, see from the other person’s expression whether they have been understood or not and, if not, clarify what was meant.
3. Check if you project your voice well
In some cases, the problem when expressing oneself has to do simply because we speak very quietly, and the rest hardly listen to us. This can be for several reasons, but the most common is shyness. Those who are very shy and worry about what other people think about them, They try to “mask” their speech so that possible errors go unnoticed …at the price of everything they say going unnoticed.
In this case, it is good to combine voice projection exercises in front of a mirror and work on the more psychological part of shyness, either alone or with the help of psychologists.
4. Practice pronunciation
This advice is simple and complicated at the same time. If you want to speak clearly, you will have to internalize the pattern of muscle movements that leads you to articulate words well, without errors. For this there is no other remedy than to practice, but paying attention to the mistakes and, instead of being ashamed of them, take them as a challenge and repeat what was said again that time correctly.
Over time, the habit of paying attention to what is said It makes it easier to prevent these mistakes before you make them by saying sounds they don’t play or changing words.
5. …or seek help
If these types of problems become very complicated, it is worth consulting speech therapists or professionals trained in the field of this type of training, although each one will offer you different guarantees based on their training experience. Choose depending on the type of problem you have detected when expressing yourself: having problems with pronunciation is not the same as having problems with the relative disorganization of what is said.
