Speaking anxiety can happen to anyone. We can get too mixed up in emotions or embarrassing memories to let our vocabulary flow out of our mouths effortlessly. We stumble on our articulation, and our minds trick us to think that we aren’t capable of speaking properly. If you can relate to this, you need to know that you’re definitely not alone and that your speech can be improved.
Here are five tips to help you overcome speaking anxiety.
1. Sign up for self-paced language lessons.
One of the first things you can do is sign up for language lessons you can follow at your own pace. Belatone is one service that provides this type of learning experience via their mobile app. You can increase your language skills and gain conversational fluency by learning language structures and real dialogues via intuitive language lessons on the go.
You will be paired with native speakers of any language so you can converse with them via live video chat. With the use of the Belatone platform, you will notice your speech will improve significantly so you can tackle everyday conversations at school, work, or even at the grocery store, and sharpen your social skills in the process.
2. Play a speech therapy game.
Likewise, if your toddlers are having trouble with their speech, you can help them with speech therapy games like Verboso. Verboso offers young children fun games to help them learn their nouns, verbs, synonyms, and other target words. This speech activity can complement your child’s speech therapy sessions in a meaningful way.
These educational games can be incorporated into your own kids’ speech therapy activities so they can learn spatial concepts by defeating monsters and exploring exotic lands. Verboso also offers a straightforward way of improving your child’s speech complications through flashcards.
3. Practice speaking with your friends or family.
Moreover, you can practice your language skills with a little help from your friends and family. Speaking frequently with others can help you reach your speech and language goals. Practice makes perfect, so if you want to be able to speak better, it’s best if you make speaking a habit. You can have so much fun talking with your friends about any hobbies or everyday topics. The idea is to not shy away from your friends or family so you can speak better every day.
4. Build up your self-esteem.
One factor that not a lot of people enjoy working on is their self-esteem. Self-esteem plays a big role when overcoming speaking anxiety. Low self-esteem can make you feel like you don’t deserve to speak well, or that maybe you deserve to have a speech disorder. It can cause us to see ourselves as boring or in a negative light and make things worse.
You can overcome this by practicing self-care exercises. These can include physical exercise, meditation, journaling, hygiene, and doing fun hobbies. All of these things will help you feel better about yourself and your body as well as accept the things you can’t change about yourself. It will make you bulletproof to negativity and help you beat anxiety.
5. Improve your body language and posture.
Lastly, you can improve your speech by improving your body language and posture. Keeping your back straight and your chin up will make you feel more confident than you are. It will help you believe in yourself and your capabilities to overcome your struggles with speech disorders.
When people see that you’re not confident, you will notice and therefore become even less assured—it becomes a cycle of hopelessness. So keep your chin up and back straight, gracefully use your hands to express yourself, and maintain eye contact.
These tips will help you improve your speech and therefore become an even better version of yourself.
