Pretty obviously, the first requirement for your voice as a teacher is that it can be heard clearly.
Male teachers tend to have a natural advantage, especially when teaching primary pupils or secondary school girls, as their voice pitch is lower than that of the class, while a female teacher’s matches the class pitch so is less easy to distinguish. But even if you’re a woman with a naturally light voice the Better Voice technique will help you by cultivating a focused tone that carries and cuts through background distractions.
You have already discovered the importance of a suitable delivery speed. Here are some other vocal strategies that will help you be heard more easily:
Say only the vowels in the sentence ‘Would you like to come to dinner with me?’, and then only the consonants. It’s pretty obvious which version gives you a better clue about what the question is.
Unfortunately a feature of modern speech is its casual approach to consonants – which as you’ve just discovered carry most of the information on what is being said.
It’s important to keep your lips and jaw relaxed while speaking, but the muscles need to be working to form the consonants clearly. Like any muscles they’ll need exercising – with plenty of reps – to get them into shape.
As well as being a useful vocal warm-up, tongue twisters are an excellent way of improving articulation. Use a variety in your work-out, especially those featuring the consonants you know need some help. There’s plenty to choose from in the Further Resources list of Unit 1 (Section 1.7).
Try recording yourself to check on progress.
Choose the place in the room you want your voice to reach and imagine ‘sending’ it there. You will automatically put your focus there too, which will be noticed by those listening.
Turning up the volume should be your last resort. Make sure you’ve tried all the other strategies first, because:
Your voice is also one of the main ways you communicate your authority to the class. And authoritative definitely doesn’t mean shouting: it is about convincing the listener you have power there without having to use it.
The young are very good at picking up subliminally on lack of confidence, and shouting is perceived by the class as the teacher losing control rather than imposing it – just as we know the parents of the toddler throwing a wobbly in the supermarket have lost control as they yell at their child ever louder to no effect. Shouting also raises the emotional temperature at a time when you want to calm things down.
Sometimes, of course, you will need to give a disorderly class does a bit of a jolt. Education behaviour expert Bill Rogers calls this ‘controlled severity’, and describes it as a ‘sharper corrective tone’ that conveys ‘No! You will never do that again – EVER!‘. He also stresses that good teachers only need to use it occasionally, because it works and the class remembers.
If your voice still gets tired by the end of the day does that mean you have vocal fatigue?
In the past there has been no clear definition of vocal fatigue, but studies have found fatigue-type symptoms in about 20% of teachers (compared with 4% of the general population) – though in a small recent study for Better Voice in Ireland the figure was 50%.
Unfortunately most symptoms of vocal fatigue can also be found in medical conditions such as chronic laryngitis, vocal fold inflammation and muscle tension dysphonia. So:
If you have fatigue-type voice problems, first check with a medical practitioner that the symptoms are not caused by a medical condition.
In 2014 researchers at Pittsburgh University produced the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI), a simple and effective procedure by which individuals can both measure their own level of vocal fatigue and gauge the effectiveness of therapeutic programmes.
They found that vocal fatigue can be characterized by three factors:
If you think you may have vocal fatigue then complete the VFI. The full Index is available as Appendix B here:
You can use your VFI scores not only to see whether you have vocal fatigue now, but to check periodically whether it may be developing – or improving as your Better Voice develops. There are numerous documented accounts, spanning more than a century, of people whose voice problems have been remedied by White’s Technique that Better Voice teaches.
Q: What did you discover from completing the Vocal Fatigue Index? Was it what you were expecting?
Pretty obviously, the first requirement for your voice as a teacher is that it can be heard clearly.
Male teachers tend to have a natural advantage, especially when teaching primary pupils or secondary school girls, as their voice pitch is lower than that of the class, while a female teacher’s matches the class pitch so is less easy to distinguish. But even if you’re a woman with a naturally light voice the Better Voice technique will help you by cultivating a focused tone that carries and cuts through background distractions.
You have already discovered the importance of a suitable delivery speed. Here are some other vocal strategies that will help you be heard more easily:
Say only the vowels in the sentence ‘Would you like to come to dinner with me?’, and then only the consonants. It’s pretty obvious which version gives you a better clue about what the question is.
Unfortunately a feature of modern speech is its casual approach to consonants – which as you’ve just discovered carry most of the information on what is being said.
It’s important to keep your lips and jaw relaxed while speaking, but the muscles need to be working to form the consonants clearly. Like any muscles they’ll need exercising – with plenty of reps – to get them into shape.
As well as being a useful vocal warm-up, tongue twisters are an excellent way of improving articulation. Use a variety in your work-out, especially those featuring the consonants you know need some help. There’s plenty to choose from in the Further Resources list of Unit 1 (Section 1.7).
Try recording yourself to check on progress.
Choose the place in the room you want your voice to reach and imagine ‘sending’ it there. You will automatically put your focus there too, which will be noticed by those listening.
Turning up the volume should be your last resort. Make sure you’ve tried all the other strategies first, because:
Your voice is also one of the main ways you communicate your authority to the class. And authoritative definitely doesn’t mean shouting: it is about convincing the listener you have power there without having to use it.
The young are very good at picking up subliminally on lack of confidence, and shouting is perceived by the class as the teacher losing control rather than imposing it – just as we know the parents of the toddler throwing a wobbly in the supermarket have lost control as they yell at their child ever louder to no effect. Shouting also raises the emotional temperature at a time when you want to calm things down.
Sometimes, of course, you will need to give a disorderly class does a bit of a jolt. Education behaviour expert Bill Rogers calls this ‘controlled severity’, and describes it as a ‘sharper corrective tone’ that conveys ‘No! You will never do that again – EVER!‘. He also stresses that good teachers only need to use it occasionally, because it works and the class remembers.
If your voice still gets tired by the end of the day does that mean you have vocal fatigue?
In the past there has been no clear definition of vocal fatigue, but studies have found fatigue-type symptoms in about 20% of teachers (compared with 4% of the general population) – though in a small recent study for Better Voice in Ireland the figure was 50%.
Unfortunately most symptoms of vocal fatigue can also be found in medical conditions such as chronic laryngitis, vocal fold inflammation and muscle tension dysphonia. So:
If you have fatigue-type voice problems, first check with a medical practitioner that the symptoms are not caused by a medical condition.
In 2014 researchers at Pittsburgh University produced the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI), a simple and effective procedure by which individuals can both measure their own level of vocal fatigue and gauge the effectiveness of therapeutic programmes.
They found that vocal fatigue can be characterized by three factors:
If you think you may have vocal fatigue then complete the VFI. The full Index is available as Appendix B here:
You can use your VFI scores not only to see whether you have vocal fatigue now, but to check periodically whether it may be developing – or improving as your Better Voice develops. There are numerous documented accounts, spanning more than a century, of people whose voice problems have been remedied by White’s Technique that Better Voice teaches.
Q: What did you discover from completing the Vocal Fatigue Index? Was it what you were expecting?
