How To Stop Stammering

The first thing to say is that if you have got a serious stammer, it's really worth going to see a good speech therapist because there are lots of things they can help you with working on the stammer. For everybody else who finds that they are stammering in speech and maybe running words together or maybe tripping over words, then the first thing to do is slow down, because most people stammer in a relaxed way when they're simply rushing, they are not putting the breaks on in the speech. And the big tip I pass on to people is speak in short thoughts, don't speak in sentences, speak in clauses, so when you hear Winston Churchill's speech “We will fight him on the beaches”, he says “We will fight them on the beaches,” pause, “We will never surrender”.

He never says we will fight them on the beaches, we will never surrender. And you have got to take that approach, everything you say is a nice short clause followed by a pause, and if you do that, then on the things that you are saying, your brain isn't running ahead of you and that's a really good trick. Another thing to do is when you finish saying your clause, you close your mouth and you breathe.

And that fills your brain with oxygen which allows you to think of the next thing you are going to say, so you only have a saying one thing at a time. And the final thing to think about is slightly stuttering and stammering over your words, you can do a little articulation warm-up in the morning. Just going “tatatatata” or “dadadada” through all the consonants is a good way to warm up your articulators or you could say a little bit of the thing you are going to say very, very slowly as if for the deaf.

And that will help you warm up your articulators, so those three things get checked out if you've got a serious stammer, think about speaking slowly and in sure thoughts and really get your articulator nice and warm if you want to sound clear and stop stammering. .