Get stuck on a word

Do you forget words while speaking?

Do you get stuck while speaking because you can’t think of an appropriate word for what you want to say next? You know what to say in your native language, but not in English.

Unfortunately, in speaking, unlike in writing, you don’t have the luxury to pause and recall an appropriate word for what you want to say. You need to get it in a flash. Otherwise, you’ll pause, which will kill your speech – and confidence.

In this post, I’ll cover why uncomfortably long pauses happen while speaking and what you can do to reduce their frequency. Read on, there is a quick way.

Why people get stuck on words while speaking?

People struggle to recall appropriate words while speaking mainly for two reasons:

1. Stage fright or nervousness

Have you been in a situation such as speaking in a small group or addressing an audience where you knew what you wanted to say like the back of your palm, but forgot to say it?

This happens not because you don’t know what to say next, but because you get nervous. In a more comforting setting, you would have stayed normal and spoken without pauses.

2. Lack of active vocabulary

Far more common reason for getting stuck for words, though, is lack of adequate active vocabulary.

Active, unlike passive, vocabulary is the vocabulary that you can use in speech and writing. For almost all of us, an overwhelmingly high proportion of vocabulary is passive, the one we can understand while reading and listening, but can’t use on the fly while speaking and writing. The image below represents proportion of the two types for most of us:

Note: Feel free to use the above and other images in the post, using the link of this post for reference/attribution.

For example, most of you will comfortably understand words such as laborious, gigantic, unrehearsed, and outplay while reading or listening, but won’t use them while speaking or writing (passive vocabulary). Active vocabulary of most people comprises of common words such as eat, sleep, run, and wash.

People who get stuck on words while speaking have even smaller active vocabularies and, therefore, they struggle to say (in English) what they want to say even in the friendliest of situations, say talking to a friend.

What can you do to stop getting stuck on words?

If nervousness is the reason behind your forgetfulness or pauses, the best remedy for you is to progressively expose yourself to situations that scare you. Speak up in a group if you fear doing so. Ask questions in a class or group if you fear doing so. Address an audience if you fear doing so. There is absolutely no escaping it. There is no other way. You’ve to pay your dues.

Key is to start small and gradually take bigger challenges (that’s why I used the word progressively). So, if you’re starting out on asking questions, start with a short, well-rehearsed question and as you gain confidence, ask longer, impromptu questions. So goes for addressing an audience. Start with small groups and graduate to larger.

For the second problem, the long-term solution is to read and listen regularly, mark new words you come across, explore them in a dictionary, and, most importantly, use them – all are important. But people struggling with pauses need a solution that remedies their problem to a significant extent in the short to medium term. Here it is.

A quick method to reduce frequency of pauses

• After you finish a conversation, note down the words (in your native language) where you paused. You may not recall the word in English, but you can certainly recall them in your native language. Right?
• Refer a bi-lingual dictionary or an online tool such as Google Translate to look for what words in English can replace the words you noted down. Listen to their pronunciations and see how they’ve been used in different examples.
• I’ll strongly recommend you note down these words along with few example sentences. Use them applying spaced repetition to retain them for long. More on this later in the post.

This may sound cumbersome, but it’s not. It’s all about getting used to it.

A huge advantage of this method:

By noting down words where you pause, you’re attacking precisely those words where you struggle, right? In that sense, this method is surgical and takes less time to reach a respectable level, which is what someone who pauses frequently need. This is in sharp contrast to building vocabulary through reading and listening, in which case you add to your overall vocabulary and not necessarily address your weak areas.

This is a quick way to reduce your pauses, but to build on this vocabulary, you should continue with general reading and listening and exploring new words you encounter. Besides, repeated exposure to words (through general reading and listening) you’re learning will embed them deeper into your active vocabulary.

How long will it take?

The good news is that we use just 2,800-odd words for more than 90 percent of our communication, and many of these words would already be part of your active vocabulary (examples: run, eat, sit, walk, bird, road, and so on).

This means you probably need few hundred (or may be thousand-odd for someone who is at a real basic level) more words to drastically reduce your pauses. If you’re regular, you can bridge the gap in few months, and then let your vocabulary build gradually through the normal route of general reading and listening.

Make your practice far more effective through…

You can make your practice far more effective by adopting spaced repetition of the list of words you’re building and being proactive in using these words. More you use them, deeper they’ll embed in your active vocabulary and more seamlessly they’ll flow into your regular communication. BTW, you need not wait for a real conversation to use these words. You can – and should – use them in your solo practice by constructing sentences around them. Here is how I did.

Repetition is key. That’s what Norman Lewis recommends in his book Speak Better Write Better English:

The secret of successful vocabulary building is repetition.

Walking this extra mile makes complete sense, because you’re attacking – and that too precisely – a pressing weak area, the list of words where you pause isn’t going to be big, and you’ll reap the benefit for the rest of your life.

Final note

While you’re on your journey to reduce the number of pauses you take, there is no harm in going around the word and describe what you want to say in a longer, slightly less accurate way. That’s better than a pause.

In the examples below, first of the pair is the accurate description. The second is somewhat roundabout, but it nonetheless conveys the meaning.

Unless you go too roundabout a word, people won’t even notice your less accurate choice of words. And as you build your active vocabulary, you’ll gradually start using more accurate words.

Summary

If you often get stuck while speaking because you can’t think of an appropriate word to describe what you want to say, start noting such words in your native language. After the conversation, find the closest English word for these words, note few example sentences, and adopt spaced repetition. Above all, use them in sentences.

Just few hundred words can bring the frequency of your pauses down drastically for life, and therefore the effort is worth the effort.

We have a saying in English which is “The enemy of the good is the perfect.”

Have you ever silenced yourself because you didn’t know how to express yourself perfectly in English? Maybe you had a wonderful idea to share or a suggestion to make but held yourself back because you didn’t know how to say it in English 100% the same way you would in your first language?

Doing so, holding back like that for fear of not saying it perfectly is actually depriving the world of your amazing ideas. Essentially, by not sharing your thoughts you’re doing the world a great disservice. As I often like to remind you, perfect is not the goal. Intelligibility is the goal.

In this lesson, we’re going to discuss a few communication strategies you can use when you might not know the exact words, expressions, or phrases to express yourself and what to do in that situation.

Let’s get into it.

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Keep in mind that sometimes we have to take a more circuitous approach when explaining something. While this might not be the best when it comes to communicating in general, if you are unable to find the exact words then this more roundabout explanation is completely fine!

(1) Simplify

Alright, so the first thing you can do is to keep it simple. We’ve got an acronym in English which is KISS and that stands for “keep it simple, silly” and so this is a good starting point. You don’t need to use the word you were looking for, say it in even simpler terms. You can use rephrasing in this situation and try to come up with the simplest explanation. A good rule of thumb is that simple is best. So don’t be tempted to complicate matters, thinking that’ll be more impressive.

(2) Define

Though you might not have the exact word, you know its meaning. You can define the term or phrase using other words. And yes, while it might extend your explanation because you’re forced to use more words to fill the gaps, it’ll enable you to get your point across! And since you know the meaning of the word you’re searching for you might also know other words that are similar in meaning. And that brings me to my next point.

(3) Similarize

Find synonyms for the exact word you’re thinking of and try to find similar words or phrases in its place. This way you can get your point across in a more compact way. A good way to start building up your synonym knowledge is to check a thesaurus every time you learn a new word. That way, you’ll be prepared to pull out a similar word or phrase if need be.

(4) Contradict

Sometimes to explain what you want to, you might need to deceive the antonym. If you can say the opposite of what is on your mind then you might be able to get your point across this way. Keeping a list of antonyms in your vocabulary journals is a good way to stay up to date on words with opposite meanings so that you have those in your back pocket for times like these.

(5) Generalize

If you are stuck trying to find the exact words, think bigger picture. If you can find a broader way of explaining something, do it. You don’t need to go into much granular detail to convey a point. If the listeners want to know more, they’ll ask follow up questions. Don’t feel pressured to be overly precise and exact by providing extensive details to your listeners. They will assess if that information is necessary and ask you to elaborate or expand on what you’ve just said. And at any rate, you don’t know what they’ll latch onto and be interested in exploring further so feel free to be as succinct and concise as you can and let the other person speak.

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Alright, nice work! So we’ve covered five ways of dealing with a situation where we can’t find the exact word to express our thoughts. Instead of holding back and staying silent, you can implement one or more of these strategies to enable you to get your point across.

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Every child gets stuck on a word once in a while as they learn to read. As a teacher or parent, it can be a little upsetting or frustrating to watch a student struggle – because we want them to be successful!

But guess what? It’s in those stuck moments where tons of growth happens! 

Kids are all different, though. Some will become frustrated or expect an adult to tell them the word. Some will try a decoding strategy – and that’s what we want!

By teaching our students decoding strategies, we equip them to be persistent problem-solvers and tackle those tricky words.

In this post, I’ll share 9 specific things you can do when you’re reading with a student and they get stuck on a tricky word!

Strategy #1: Wait.

When we see a child struggling, it’s tempting to jump in to try and “rescue” them. But when they’re reading independently, they’re not always going to have an adult there next to them!

So when I see a student struggling with a word, the first thing I do is wait! I wait to see what they’re going to try. I let them struggle a little bit. I keep my eyes on the word. Sometimes I nod and smile at the reader encouragingly.

Often they’ll figure out the word all by themselves! If they seem super frustrated, I can always tell them the word or move onto one of these next strategies.

Strategy #2: Prompt the student to “say the sounds and blend.”

This is the first decoding strategy I teach my students! As soon as they start learning the letter sounds, we work on blending. For example, once they know the sounds for the letters s, i, t, they can blend to read the word “sit” by saying /s/ /ĭ/ /t/, sit. (This is what most people mean when they say “sound it out.”

Of course, for this strategy to work, the student must know the sounds represented by the letters in the tricky word. If a child hasn’t learned, for example, that the letters “oa” can make the long o sound, then blending to read isn’t necessarily going to work. If you’re going to give a student this prompt, make sure that their phonics knowledge is sufficient so that they can be successful with the word.

For more tips and tricks for teaching blending, check out this post.

Strategy #3: Prompt the student to “say the sounds they do know.”

If the tricky word contains sounds that the student doesn’t yet know, have them at least say the sounds that they do know.

If the word is boat, you might prompt them to say the first sound and the last sound. You can tell them, “oa says /ō/ in this word.” Then, they’ll (hopefully) be able to use that knowledge to read the entire word.

With this strategy, you’re still getting the child to do some of the work, even if you have to fill in certain gaps.

Strategy #4: Tell them the sounds and have them blend.

If Strategy #2 and #3 don’t work for the student, you can say the sounds yourself. For example, if the word is “sheep,” you say: “/sh/ /ē/ /p/.” See if the child can say “sheep.”

It’s also helpful if you point to the letter or letters that represent each sound as you say the sounds.

Strategy #5: Ask them to break up the word into chunks or syllables.

This strategy is great for readers who have a good amount of phonics knowledge and are beginning to read more challenging words – sometimes with more than one syllable.

There are different ways to have kids apply this strategy. Here are a few examples:

• If a reader gets stuck on the word “sand,” model covering the letter “s” which leaves the word “and.” They will likely recognize “and.” Last, ask them to put the /s/ sound with /and/ to read the entire word.
• If a reader gets stuck on the word “playground,” they might recognize the first syllable immediately (play). But if not, you can direct them to look at the beginning blend (pl) and blend that with the “ay” vowel team (long a sound). Next, move onto “ground.” Help them notice the beginning blend in the syllable (gr), the diphthong “ou,” and the ending blend “nd.” They can blend to read the second syllable, and then put the syllables together to read “playground.”

Note: the process described in the second example can take a while. You might choose to do it with one word per text (perhaps if you’re a teaching a guided reading group you do it with the entire group), but you wouldn’t want to spend tons of time going through that process for every tricky word. Otherwise, the reader may end up frustrated by the slow pace and lose track of the meaning of the text.

Strategy #6: Prompt the reader to “try a different sound.”

I primarily use this strategy for the vowels, since English vowels are tricky! (But it can also be used with other sounds, like hard and soft g and c.)

Here’s one example: the “ea” vowel team can make either the short or long e sound.

For example, if a child misreads the word “bread” as “breed,” with a long e instead of a short e, prompt them to “try a different sound for ea.”

Strategy #7: Prompt them to cover the ending or tricky part.

I love using this strategy when we begin working on inflectional endings like -ing and -ed! (Example: “playing”)

Sometimes students feel intimidated by a longer word. So I teach them to take their finger and cover up the ending so they can focus on the base word. In the word “playing,” they would cover up “ing.” They would read the word “play” and then add “ing.”

This strategy can also be used with prefixes found at the beginning of a word. For example, in the words “reuse” and “unkind” we can teach students to cover up the prefix and decode the base word first. 

Strategy #8: Prompt them to think about similar words.

Most words in English follow some kind of pattern. If a student knows a word that’s similar to the tricky one, that can help them.

For example, if a student gets stuck on the word “bright,” you might ask, “Are there any other words you know that remind you of this word?” They might think of “right” or “light.” Or, you might provide an example if they can’t think of one.

This is not a strategy I use as often as the others, but it can still be helpful in specific cases.

Strategy #9: Prompt them to give it their best effort and keep reading. They can come back to the word later.

Sometimes these strategies aren’t going to work. There are some challenging “rule breaking” words in the English language!

So I teach my students to try several strategies, and if they’re still not sure, just pronounce the word the best they can. Then, they can keep reading and come back to the word after finishing the page or paragraph. (Sometimes their brain just needs a break, or sometimes the content of the text will help them realize what the tricky word was.)

Teaching this strategy means that you’re not always going to intervene when a reader has trouble with a word. Yes, we want to provide supportive teaching and plenty of modeling. No, we don’t want them to become extremely frustrated. But we can’t always swoop in to “rescue” our students, because they aren’t always going to have the help of an adult reader when they’re reading on their own.

As long as you’ve provided effective decoding and phonics instruction, allowing kids to “handle” a tricky word without your help can actually be empowering. It communicates to them that you have confidence in their reading abilities!

Conclusion

When you’re supporting a student with using reading strategies, don’t forget that modeling comes first! You might tell them “try a different vowel sound,” but they won’t exactly know what that means until you model it. (Sometimes until you’ve modeled it several times!)

And of course, developing strong decoding skills requires that students receive strong phonics instruction. If you’re looking for a multi-sensory, engaging phonics program for Kindergarten, first grade, or second grade students, check out From Sounds to Spelling. You can grab a free week of the program HERE!

Or, if you’d like some decoding strategy visuals (plus comprehension and fluency visuals), my reading workshop toolkits include tons of posters and strategy cards. You can check them out here: 

Happy teaching!