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From: Judy Kuster
Date: 05 Oct 2012
Time: 10:56:44 -0500
Remote Name: 76.17.183.48
Andrew - you have asked some really good questions. I will let some of the others answer, too! When a person is nervous, many (even most) people will have some of the same bobbles in their speech that you hear in the speech of people who stutter - things like repeating sounds and words or starting a thought over again. This is not really the same kind of "stuttering" that you hear in people who stutter and it is very normal. In fact, when it happens to people who are not stutterers, they usually ignore it completely. The interesting thing is that most listeners ignore it completely, too!! Listen very carefully to your teacher trying to explain something in class that is hard to explain. That probably makes her a little nervous, and often if you listen carefully, you will hear those little bobbles. You even hear them in live interviews and news programs on TV, even from people who are professional speakers. What you asked is often an assignment a speech clinician will ask a client to do -- see how often those bobbles happen in people who don't "stutter." It is good to learn that it happens to everyone and that for most people, both the speaker and the listener, it really doesn't matter.