Page 24 - MEP Workbook
P. 24
22 ARTiculate: Rea
Voice On:
Let Your Voice Show Up
Without the visual element of in-person communication, you have to bring your full voice to the party. You'll do better at engaging your audience and giving them a sense of how you are feeling.
Loudness is Separate from Energy: Think about how you can use musicality (prosody) in your voice instead of just getting louder for emphasis. Getting too loud can be perceived as annoying or aggressive.
You want to keep your voice energized. It may feel like it's taking more energy than when you are communicating in person—it is. You are using only voice in a world that depends on non-verbals.
Stand if you feel that your energy is low.
Slow Down and Buy a Vowel: Speaking too quickly and/or with clipped speech is difficult to understand. Emphasizing your consonants—even though we think it helps us to enunciate more clearly—is actually harder to understand. This is especially true on the phone or over a digital signal.
Using "gummy words" or giving our vowels equal consideration can go a long way toward making your speech easier to understand. This is called elision. In music, it's legato vs. staccato.
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