Tongue slip problem in presentation even after a good amount of practice How can I overcome the tongue-slip problem in conferences, meetings and seminars? I have read many discussions regarding conference presentation, such as delivering a good presentation, staying confident during presentation, avoiding nervousness, maintaining time and many more. But I have not found a proper answer to the tongue-slip problem.

I recently faced it in a presentation, only once, but in my title slide. The word was extreme, which I could not pronounce even in 5–7 seconds and felt much shame, finally pronounced it as esteem. I had previously done very good practice such as in front of a mirror and closing my eyes. I would also like to mention that I have used the same word several times very clearly in past conferences and also used same word very clearly in my next slide onwards.

How to overcome this problem? Many times I face similar problems, maybe with different words, but I have been noticing that it always happens in first few minutes of a presentation.
Years ago, I transcribed raw film footage to earn a little extra money. These transcriptions had to be verbatim, with all the ums, ahs, stuttering, etc. included. It's surprisingly difficult to do a verbatim transcription, because there is a strong tendency for listeners to hear what is meant, rather than what is actually said. We transcribers had to listen to things three or four times to record the speech exactly. The first time I listened to something, I wouldn't even notice the mistakes!

Some of the transcriptions I did were of people famous for being well-spoken, people I admire very much. I was surprised to learn that they make frequent speech errors/hesitations/disfluencies, just like the rest of us.

As a result of that experience, I realised that while we are all painfully aware of the imperfections in our own speech, others hardly notice them at all. Most mistakes are filtered out by the listener's brain, and aren't truly "heard".