The King's stammering

The Best Picture: "The King's Speech" was awarded Oscar's best picture this year.  Before the ceremony, I did not know about this film (I personally liked the "Winter's Bone").  So for the sake of my curiosity, I went to see this movie this weekend.  Although it was released a while ago, the theater room was a bit filled with people, perhaps because this film gained some attention due to the award.

Stammering: Why do some people stammer (stutter)?  I recollect that one of my classmates in the middle school had this type of speech problem.  He was a smart kid and always in the top three in my class.

The cause: As seen in the movie, stammering might mostly come from the psychological trauma during early childhood.  Family feud, frustration, pressure from siblings, peers or teachers, particularly at the ages at which language skills develop, causes kids to become anxious about disfluency.  Impatience makes things worse, as the king's father did in the movie.

Speech anxiety:

Nearly most of people have an anxiety of public speech.  Why not?  It is natural.  As part of my job duties, I have to stand in front of a bunch of students and deliver the lectures.  The very first class was very scary, particularly because my spoken language skill (broken English) was still awkward.  I stammered on some occasion, because I could not find right words at those moments, although I practiced the lecture several times before I went to the lecture room.  

As part of the class activity, students are asked to make oral presentations.  Some of them have shaky voice and stammer due to the anxiety.  Only experience will relieve them from this type of stress. 

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