Monday, October 12, 2009

Stuttering at Work

One of my duties as a counselor is to occasionally tape a recorded report of the shifts' events for the on-coming shift. I say occasionally because it's primarily the nurse's job to perform this function, but often circumstances arise that make this difficult or inconvenient. We record the shift report only on my shift because my shift ends at 11:30pm and the only shift interested in the report would be the next morning's shift...not the overnight shift when the kids are all asleep, although they are free to listen to it.

The day shift gives the shift report in person and there is no reason to record it.

I recorded the shift report three nights this past weekend...Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night. The report is recorded in a closed room, so I was by myself with nobody around to hear me record it, yet, I had much difficulty getting through it while being fluent. Ordinarily when I am speaking alone in a room I am almost completely fluent. But not while recording myself. Why do you think this is?

Could it be that...I realize that my voice is being recorded and that those that hear it will ONLY hear my voice and so there is added pressure to be fluent? I view it much as a phone conversation where the listener has a delayed hearing of my end of the conversation. Since I am most dysfluent while speaking on the phone, it would only make sense that making a recording that is much like having a one-sided phone conversation that I know will be heard later by the listener...would also give me just as much trouble.

Incidentally, I was able to record a fully fluent report all three days by intermittently stopping the recording when I came to a word or phrase that gave me trouble or going back and recording over stuttering events. It took longer because of this, but I was at least happy with the result.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm the same way. I also have a terrible time speaking into microphones.

romiarora said...

well stanley it is fear wich cums in every1 n ya nt only u many ppl r sufferin frm tis n ya for this v need 2 practice wid confidence n v need to do sum breathin exercises.though its tough but nt impossible n ya i jus wanna god help those those u help themselves .

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