Excuse Me, Did You Just Fart?

Posted on February 27th, 2008 in Social Skills, brain fart, communication, speech

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of speakers with brain farts. It’s annoying really like… umm, well…you know… we should try um aaa you know.

See? Isn’t that annoying?

Back then when I was in English Communication Skill class (or something like that), the lecturer really pissed off when our brain farted. I do understand now why. But, the lecturer never really gives any solution to this problem.

“Today, um I aaa want to talk about… you know”
“Stop farting!”
“I wish I could. Would you like to tell me how I can stop my brain farts?”
“Just continue with your speech and stop farting”

See… Not really encouraging. So here I am now, with all due respect to the lecturer, wish to provide a way to teach your brain how to be more polite. Polite brain won’t fart in front of the public.

There are two ways to do this:

First. Get a recorder, MP3 recorder or if you are old schooler, tape recorder (lol). Then go to http://www.zokutou.co.uk/randomword/. This page will generate a random word. Now try to talk out loud about the word and make sure you record it. Then listen back to your recording, and jot down all the brain farts you encounter. Once you got the list, read them out loud. This way you’ll be more conscious of them next time.

Second way is a bit easier, but might not work that well for beginners. But, before that we must understand why our brain farts – simply because, when we are struggling for words, the brain will automatically fill in the blank to give us some time to think.

Good intention, but bad execution.

Here’s how to fix it - next time you find yourself struggling for words, simply shut your mouth up.

So instead of:

“I think um… we all should you know do it um right now”

It’ll be

“I think <pause> we all should <pause> do it <pause> right now”

Not only you’ll remove the brain fart, you will also create mysterious aura and build anticipation. Brilliant! Girls will think you are actually cool (only applies if you are a man).

End result – people will actually listen to you.

Cheers!

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