Hello,
I'll give a background, but if you wish to skip it please go to the bolded paragraphs
I have a horrible problem. My situation goes like this, I suffered from low self-esteem all my life. From Pre-K to college I never talked to anyone. The only time I would talk was when I was with my close friends whom I met only on Sundays.
Then in the second year of college I decided to change and start talking to people. When I first tried everyone had trouble understanding me. They always told me to speak louder. So I practiced speaking louder. Even when I started speaking up people still had problem understanding me because of my lack of articulation. I went to one of my speech professor and she has been helping me improve my articulation and pronunciation. I never used my lip or tongue when speaking so I had I to practice enunciation.
I've been improving on a lot of speech related things but there is just one thing I can't fix, and that's verbal fluency and articulation. I always have trouble describing things verbally. I get tongue tied and can't think of the words to say, I'm always saying "you know" or "whats the word" I can't say a full sentence without stumbling, and if I do say a full sentence it comes out in broken English. I can't use the "i'm not a native card" because English is the only language I know.
Because of this problem I've been failing every single job interviews. I failed 6 already......
The thing is, I can have a whole scenario conversation in my head which flows so well but I can't apply it to reality. Also this speech problem isn't just with strangers, but with friends and families as well
Does anyone have a solution for this? Its been causing me so much stress and frustration. Everyone thinks of me as incompetent and uneducated... which I'm starting to think is true.