Welcome. This course is designed to make your English feel more available in the moments that matter: networking, phone meetings, unexpected questions, and respectful disagreement. We will work from observable habits rather than vague impressions of “speaking well.”
This first module establishes control under pressure. Today, you will create a 90-second baseline recording and measure four habits that can make a response sound less fluent: vocal fillers, disruptive hesitation pauses, repetitions, and sentence restarts. This is not a performance test. It is a snapshot of what happens when you speak spontaneously now, so later progress can be concrete and visible.
Plan to do this lesson in three short sessions of about 10–15 minutes each. The recording should be a single, unedited take.
A baseline is evidence, not a verdict
In live English conversations, you are often doing several things at once: understanding the other person, selecting vocabulary, forming grammar, deciding what you think, and managing the social pressure of the interaction. Small disfluencies are therefore normal. The purpose of measurement is not to eliminate every pause or repair; it is to identify which habits are frequent enough to interfere with clarity.
A useful model comes from Toastmasters’ Ah-Counter role: listen carefully, tally specific habits, then give an accurate and supportive report. For your baseline, you will act as your own Ah-Counter.
Before recording, watch this brief explanation of why speakers often fail to notice their own crutch words and why playback is valuable.
5 Speaking Tips to Avoid Filler Words During (Virtual) Presentations
Watch “5 Speaking Tips to Avoid Filler Words During (Virtual) Presentations” by Riaz Meghji. It explains the first principle of this lesson: you cannot reliably change a speaking habit until you can hear and identify it.
Watch the self-audit method. Focus on the shift from guessing about your habits to using a recording or a listener to tally what actually occurs. The exact filler-rate figures are less important than establishing your own starting point.
Your score is not a measure of intelligence, professional ability, or English potential. It is simply data from one 90-second sample. In fact, an honest baseline is more useful than an artificially polished one.
What you will count—and what you will not
To make later comparisons meaningful, use the same definitions every time. Read the short classification below before you record.
Read this short overview to distinguish filled pauses, repetitions, revisions, and silent pauses. It also gives a useful explanation of why spontaneous or high-pressure speaking can bring these habits out.
In the opening definition list, read the filled-pause definition. Then read repetitions and revisions, followed by the discussion of silent pauses. In the section “Causes of disfluencies,” read the paragraphs on language formulation and cognitive load, especially the cognitive-load explanation. Read for recognition, not diagnosis: the aim is to label what you hear accurately.
Use this counting protocol.
| Category | Count it when… | Examples | Do not count it when… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vocal filler | A sound or word fills thinking time but adds no meaning. | “um,” “uh,” “er,” “you know,” “basically,” “kind of,” “like” | The word has a real grammatical or semantic role: “I like this approach.” |
| Disruptive hesitation pause | Silence is roughly two seconds or longer and breaks an unfinished thought or makes the listener wait for you to find the next word. | “The main risk is … [long silence] … the timeline.” | A brief pause at a comma, between clear points, or before an important conclusion. Those pauses can improve clarity. |
| Repetition | You immediately repeat a sound, word, or phrase because you are searching, stuck, or correcting your start. | “We need to, we need to check the data.” | Deliberate emphasis: “It was a very, very important decision.” |
| Sentence restart | You abandon a developing sentence and begin a new grammatical route. | “The project is—what I mean is, our main priority is the project timeline.” | A brief correction that preserves the sentence: “The meeting is Tuesday—sorry, Wednesday.” Note it if useful, but do not count it as a restart. |
Two rules keep the data clean:
- Do not double-count one event. If you say, “I, I think we should…,” count one repetition, not both a repetition and a sentence restart.
- Judge function, not just the word. “So” can be a filler at the beginning of every sentence, but it can also show a genuine connection: “We had limited data, so we delayed the decision.”
A silent pause is not automatically a problem. In later lessons, you will deliberately use a one-to-two-second pause instead of saying “um.” Today, count only pauses that genuinely disrupt an incomplete thought. This distinction matters: articulate speakers use silence; they do not merely avoid it.
Record one realistic 90-second response
Choose a prompt close to the professional conversations you want to handle better:
Describe a current project or responsibility. What is its purpose, what is one challenge, and what is the next step?
If that prompt does not fit your work, use this alternative:
What is one change you think would improve how your team works, and why?
Recording protocol
- Use your phone’s voice recorder or camera. Audio is enough; video is optional.
- Read the prompt once. Give yourself no more than 15 seconds to think.
- Speak for 90 seconds in one take. Do not write a script, rehearse, pause the recording, or restart the whole answer.
- If you finish early, add a relevant example or explain the next step in more detail.
- Stop at 90 seconds and save the file with a neutral name, such as
Baseline_01_Date.
Aim for a natural meeting pace rather than trying to sound especially polished. Keep every stumble. A recording with a few rough moments is exactly what makes the baseline useful.
Before you move on, write down the context in one line:
- Prompt used
- Date and approximate time
- Situation: alone / after work / before a meeting / tired / relaxed
- Language conditions: for example, “spoke English twice this week” or “first English speaking task today”
These notes will help you interpret the result later. A baseline recorded after an exhausting day may differ from one recorded when you are relaxed; neither is “wrong.”
Audit the recording in separate passes
Do not try to hear everything at once. Treat the 90-second clip as four small listening tasks. Use headphones if possible, and listen at normal speed.
First, use a transcript only as a supplement. Transcripts can make repeated words and common fillers easier to spot, but automated captions may omit “um,” mishear words, or fail to show pauses. The recording itself is the final evidence.
Read the “After the Speech” guidance from Toastmasters International for a practical method of reviewing a recording and using a transcript’s search function to identify recurring fillers.
Under “After the Speech,” read item 1, “Identify filler words.” Start at the recording-and-transcript method. Then read the short “like” example immediately below it. Apply its deletion test: if removing a word leaves the sentence just as clear, it was probably functioning as a filler.
Pass 1: listen for the overall message
Listen once without tallying. Your only job is to notice the shape of the response.
- Where did you sound most settled?
- Where did you begin searching for words?
- Did the challenge or next step create more hesitation than the opening?
Do not evaluate grammar, accent, confidence, or content quality yet. Those are separate skills and will be addressed later in the course.
Pass 2: tally vocal fillers
Listen again and make one mark each time you hear a filler. Also note the specific filler word or phrase.
For example:
um: 3uh: 1likeused as filler: 2you know: 1
Use the deletion test for ambiguous words. In “I like working with the team,” like carries meaning. In “I was, like, concerned about the deadline,” it probably does not.
Pass 3: tally disruptive pauses
Listen a third time for silence. Mark only pauses that are approximately two seconds or longer and interrupt an unfinished idea. You can add a timestamp if you want, such as 0:42 — pause before naming the challenge.
Do not penalize a pause after a complete sentence. A pause after “There are two reasons for that” can help the listener prepare for the two reasons.
Pass 4: tally repetitions and restarts
On the final pass, listen for accidental repetitions and abandoned sentences. Use the definitions from the table rather than relying on a general feeling that the speech was “messy.”
If you are uncertain about an event, replay that five- to ten-second section once. Then make a consistent decision and move on. You do not need courtroom-level precision; you need a method you can repeat.
Create your baseline scorecard
Copy this scorecard into your notes app. Keep the first recording; do not overwrite it.
| Baseline measure | Your result |
|---|---|
| Recording length | 90 seconds |
| Vocal fillers: total | |
| Most frequent filler word or phrase | |
| Disruptive hesitation pauses | |
| Repetitions | |
| Sentence restarts | |
| One timestamp where the habit appeared most often | |
| One moment that sounded clear and controlled |
Because the sample is 90 seconds, you can convert fillers to a per-minute rate if you want a convenient comparison number:
For example, 6 fillers in 90 seconds equals 4 fillers per minute. Keep the raw 90-second count too, since future comparison recordings will use the same length.
Finally, write one factual observation—not a judgment:
- “Most fillers appeared when I explained the challenge.”
- “I restarted sentences when I gave details.”
- “My pauses were mostly between points, not inside sentences.”
- “I used ‘you know’ four times without noticing.”
Avoid conclusions such as “My English is bad” or “I cannot speak spontaneously.” One recording cannot establish either claim. It can establish a starting pattern.
Takeaway and next step
You now have a measurable baseline: one unedited 90-second response, reviewed with clear rules for fillers, disruptive pauses, repetitions, and sentence restarts. The most important result is not a low number—it is knowing which habit appears, when it appears, and what a future recording can be compared against.
Keep the recording and scorecard. In the next lesson, you will add a brief breathing and grounding routine for the moments just before a pressured conversation begins. That routine is not meant to make you perfect; it is meant to give you enough calm to access the ideas you already have.