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From: Veronica, Ireland
Date: 04 Oct 2007
Time: 18:42:18 -0500
Remote Name: 86.40.158.107
I really love the idea of 'imperfect fluency' As a covert stammerer for most of my life I had a high degree of fluency, albeit at a cost, the stress of being constantly fluent by constantly having to use crutches such as changing words, inserting fillers etc was huge and I was permanently exhausted from the efforts to appear fluent. I now avoid less and stutter more but, in my mind at least, I am imperfectly fluent but ultimately a lot more honest with myself and others. Like you I sometimes use learned speech techniques and sometimes resort to tricks depending on the situation. Do you think we stutterers put too much emphasis on how fluent we perceive ourselves to be? and is it better to accept being imperfectly fluent or to strive for greater fluency? I really enjoyed your article Veronica