Did you have a teacher in your school who was a Toastmaster too? Lets bring her to help us introduce our role as the Ah Counter for the day. Here is a script that does just that. Have a look.
When I was in school, my history teacher had a very practical way of testing how well we had prepared our lessons. She would ask us a question and listen to our answers with a keen ear. Any student who had prepared the lesson well would answer the question in one go without interruptions. However, when a student started using words like umm, so, like, because etc., she knew that the student had not studied the lesson well.
Like it or not but when we are on the stage, our audience has a similar system to judge us. Using too many filler words such as umm, ah, err, you know etc. or frequent pauses puts our credibility into doubt in the audience’s mind.
To help you in this regard, I as the Ah counter will keep a track of all such filler words used by our speakers and make a note of it. I will come back with my report towards the end of the meeting.
Thank You.
My Meeting Roles 