Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Power of UMMM….

I would not say I’m the best public speaker, but I do feel I can keep an audience engaged when needed. We are in orientations right now. I have to do presentations to usually groups of 20-30 students and parents. I sat in today while another individual was giving the presentation and good grief at every pause there was an ummmm. I found this terribly distracting. I may do this and never noticed, but now I have to do a presentation this afternoon and I’m really concerned about this ummm factor. I have concerns I’ll be so focused to see if indeed I’m doing it also, that I will not keep the audience engaged. Ummm, Yikes!!!

2 comments:

Laura said...

Did you know that in Turkmen, umm is the word for penis. Talk about a transcultural faux paux if your fellow colleague went there with his/her umming. Scandalous!

allie said...

LOL, I said it once today during my presentation and quickly stopped myself for doing it again. I don't know about yesterday the room was a sauna and I was melting too much to pay attention.

Now I know this, I just hope there were no Turkmen speakers in the room.