How to speak slower
People who talk too fast rarely say the words too fast. They leave no gaps. Slower is not longer words; it is a breath at the end of each line, long enough for the listener to catch up.
Read six lines. One line, then a breath. The teacher stops you where the pause disappears.
Try the pause drillFree, in the browser, no account. Your voice is analysed on your device and never recorded.Fast talkers don't say words faster
Most rushed talk comes from joining thoughts without a boundary. Each word may be perfectly normal, but the next sentence starts before the listener has placed the last one. Stretching vowels only makes the voice heavy and unnatural.
Listen for gaps instead. A clear pause tells the listener that one thought has landed and another is about to begin.
The pause is the technique
Take a breath at every full stop and a smaller one at a useful comma. Let the sentence land before you begin the next. Keep the words themselves alive and conversational.
The silence will feel long from inside your own voice. To everyone else it usually feels calm and easy to follow. Do not fill it with a repeated word or a nervous sound; simply breathe.
How to practise it
Use short lines. Say one line, close the thought, then let one breath happen. Put the pause where the sentence ends, not in the middle of a phrase where it breaks the meaning.
Mark the ends on a page if you need to. After a few rounds, remove the marks and keep the same breathing pattern in ordinary talk. Start with a story you know well, so attention can stay on the breath rather than finding the next word.
Why do I talk so fast when I'm nervous?
Adrenaline makes you want to get through the thought and be done. The fix is mechanical rather than a demand to feel calm: finish the line, take the breath, and only then begin again.
How the drill trains it
Your warm-up measures the gap you usually leave between lines. The aim is a longer, useful gap for that day. When one line runs into the next, the teacher stops you and asks for the breath at the named spot.
The drill does not count words per minute. It trains the pause, which is what slows the whole message without distorting the words. Redo the line, let it land, and move on.
Finish one thought, let one breath arrive, then begin the next.
Try the pause drill