Tic picking.

A reader asks Eugene Volokh what, if anything, he does to cure his law students of peppering their speech with "like" and "you know."  Prof. Volokh suggests that perhaps these tics are uncontrollable or nearly so, like a speech impediment, and solicits comments. 

It’s an interesting thread, and I was eager to read it because, I’m embarrassed to say, I still have a problem with "like" in my speech and I was hoping for some tips to reduce it.  I don’t think I’ll take the advice given in this comment, but it made me laugh:

I had a high school speech teacher that would keep tallies of "you knows" or "like" or any other verbal holding words and show the students. In a prior class, she had a student with a foam bat whomp the offending student on each improper filler.

This is one way in which the verbal fillers are totally different than stuttering; whomping stutterers with foam bats results in more stuttering.

["Curing Stuttering: Foam Bats Don’t Work" – Wood Bat Institute Quarterly, Fall 1988.]

Oh well, like, you know, maybe next time.  Many of the lawyers saythey were cured of this affliction eventually, after seeing transcripts of depositions and the like.  I don’t think I can afford to have a court reporter follow me around for a few days.