By Lauren Peller

Unless you are one of the lucky ones for which public speaking comes easily, you may find college interviews, job interviews, or oral presentations to be quite frustrating and challenging. Today, there is an app for everything, and now there is an app designed to be your personal speech coach, called LikeSo, which may be a cost effective option for you to try in the privacy of your own home.

One of the most common issues in public speaking that millennials combat is the use of “filler words.” Of course, everyone struggles by adding in too many of these words, such as “like” or “you know” or “actually” or even “um.” You could dismiss this as being a part of our culture, but aren’t there high stakes instances in which we need to be very clearly understood and cannot afford to diminish our message? According to Tricia Ferrera, the author of “Parenting 2.0: Think in the Future, Act in the Now,” when she shows her teen clients the difference in removing the filler words from their dialogue, they surely see that their message becomes much clearer.

LikeSo, the brainchild of Audrey Mann Cronin, a communications and media specialist, was conceived when she saw her teenage daughter, once confident and articulate, beginning to fall into the filler word trap. Mann Cronin imagined that this 99 cent app would have the feel of a game, yet provide valuable feedback. She explained, “this is your personal speech coach…it’s about speech fitness and being aware and practice.”

Using voice recognition technology, LikeSo allows you to either speak extemporaneously or pick from a list of topics for 1, 2, 5, or 30 minutes. Next, you list the words that you would like to eliminate from your speech, specifically the unnecessary filler words (like, actually, etc.). Now, you are ready to hit start and begin to talk. Starting you off with a countdown clock, you will have 3 seconds to devise what you will say and the option to pass on any topic. At first, this may be nerve racking, but the idea is to practice and use LikeSo’s feedback to improve. The app provides a detailed analysis including your pace speaking and the fillers that were acheter du cialis en belgique recorded. It may reveal that you need to slow down and make some conscious efforts to eliminate those nagging fillers.

With people so immersed in many social channels for online communications that reduce the opportunity to work on our face to face conversations, Mann Cronin sought to fight back and develop an app that would use technology as part of the answer. LikeSo provides an objective way to evaluate your speech patterns, customized to your goals, allowing you to track your progress over time. Considering the cost of the 99 cent app, why not give it a try if public speaking is anxiety provoking? Mann Cronin puts it in these simple terms: “When you don’t speak confidently and articulately and the other person does, who’s going to get the job?” This may become an app that both parents and students like.

Photo Courtesy of Bustle.com