Lesson 3: Getting Acquainted With Your Voice and Learning Ethics

Not opening your mouth enough is the main cause of poor diction. Because the mouth is not opened sufficiently to allow all the sounds to evolve into clearly spoken words, the sounds struggle somewhere down in your throat. A great exercise is to repeat vowel sounds aloud slowly, holding the sound of the vowel (please take the opportunity to try this experiment). Hold the sound of each vowel a full breath: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I and so on. Practice until you produce a forceful sound and you feel the muscles in your lips and mouth working.

Really, nothing is more beautiful in our spoken language than fully stressed vowel sounds. Say each word out loud.

Relax your neck, throat, mouth, and lips; breathe deeply through your nose; open your mouth wide, and let these sounds gently roll out full and strong. Say the following words out loud:

convaayed

receeved

believe

repreeve

di-viide

re-viise

It is important not to over-enunciate, because this will make your speech sound contrived or phony.

The rate of your speech lies between 130 and 160 words per minute. Speaking too quickly causes poor diction, of course, and makes your audience completely lose attention. Running words together, slurring words, and dropping word endings, will destroy any credibility you have as a speaker.

On the other hand, speaking too slowly can irritate your listeners even more! If a speaker repeatedly “draaaags” out a phrase or sentence, the audience will yawn and lose interest. The way to check your delivery rate is to practice on your tape recorder. ³

Um, right, you know, ok, and ah are filler or static words. Your audience will know that you aren’t prepared if you add any static words. The way to eliminate these words is to pause. For some reason, silence is frightening to speakers and they just can’t endure one moment of complete stillness. From either nervousness, habit, or both, they fill pauses with these words. Very often presenters are unaware that they are making these sounds.

Now is the time for you to enhance your formal and informal speaking styles. The suggestions in this lesson will assist you in improving your everyday speech and in sounding more articulate. I recommend that you do some form of deep breathing exercise so that you can lessen your anxiety and stress. You should also take the opportunity to practice the diction exercises outlined in this lesson, as well as monitor the rate and volume of your speaking. This will help you prepare for the self-introductory speech that you will submit in lesson 4.