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Mental Status Exam

Assessing Speech

Causes of abnormal speech.

Psychiatric disorder - mood disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia
Confusion - delirium, dementia, intellectual disability
Dysphasia / aphasia
Dysarthria - stroke, brain injury, Parkinson's, MS
Dysphonia - laryngitis, neuropathology, trauma, mass, atrophy, systemic disease
Hearing impairment
English as a non-native language
Intoxication

Rate of Speech

Interpretation.

Slow speech (bradylalia) Depression, Parkinson's disease, cognitive impairment
Normal speech rate
Rapid speech (tachylalia) - fast speech but able to be redirected Normal, mania, anxiety, stimulants
Pressured speech - fast and without taking breaks, talking over other people and unable to be redirected Mania, anxiety

Volume of Speech

Loud (hyperphonia) Personality trait, hearing impairment, mania
Normal speech volume
Weak (hypophonia) - low or soft speech Shyness, anxiety, depression, Parkinson's disease

Quantity of Speech

Excessive talking (logorrhoea) - speaking at length and apparently without end Mania, ADHD, anxiety
Talkative - actively takes part in conversation. Normal
Poverty of speech - very little speech, even with persuasion. Shyness, depression, schizophrenia, cognitive impairment

Examples of Dysfluency

Stuttering - repetition, prolongation, or pauses in speech May be developmental, neurogenic, or psychogenic
Cluttering - rapid, disorganized speech with excessive word and phrase repetitions Often related to language or learning disabilities

Causes of Impaired Speech Fluency

Foreign language
Expressive - varied pitch and intonation Normal tonality
Monotone - the patient uses a single tone for vocal expression. Boredom, depression, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder
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Mental State Examination 2 – Speech and Thought

Author(s): farah rozali, learning outcomes.

By the end of this CAL you will be able to:

Describe the general purpose and component parts of the Mental State Examination (MSE), specifically patients’ speech and thought.
Evaluate patients’ speech and thought in their mental state and use appropriate terminology to describe abnormalities.

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to Neelom Sharma, Alexandra Pittock, Meroe Grove, Maia Forrester and Mercedes Smith for their major contributions to the content of this module.

Introduction Part 1 of 11

Before we get started, let’s quickly recap on the last session, which was about the domains of appearance and behaviour:

Speech and Thought Part 2 of 11

Is it all coming back to you?

Great! Let’s move on then to learning about the next two domains of the MSE:

Speech and Thought.

How a person speaks can be abnormal in a number of mental disorders and should be observed and commented upon. This should be described in terms of…

the ‘latencies’ – the time between you asking a question and the patient replying
the ‘volume ’ – both how loudly one speaks and the number of words one uses
the ‘ rate’ – how fast one gets the words out
the ‘rhythm’ – the regularity of phrasing within sentences
the ‘ intonation’ – the amount of inflection, or cadence (the ‘lilt’) in the voice
the ‘ prosody’ – the extent to which one uses emphasis to convey meaning that grammar alone cannot

Speech Part 3 of 11

To begin with, is there any speech at all.

A small number of patients are mute during interview. If so comment on…

Apparent level of comprehension – does the patient appear to understand what is said? e.g. shakes or nods head appropriately
Level of alternate communication – can they write answers down, do they point or use gestures?
Level of structural impairment of the organs of speech i.e. is there any evidence of dysarthria? (difficult or unclear articulation of speech that is otherwise linguistically normal)

What is the volume of speech?

Does the patient whisper? Or speak inappropriately loudly?
Is there stuttering or slurring of speech?
Are answers unduly brief or monosyllabic?
Conversely, are they inappropriately prolonged? (NB: this could also be because of speed of speech)

What is the rate of speech?

Is the patient’s speech unusually slow or unusually rapid (pressured speech)?
This may reflect acceleration or deceleration in the speed of thought

What is the latency of speech?

Does the patient respond spontaneously?
Are there long pauses between asking a question and the patient responding?

What is the tone and rhythm of speech?

Does the intonation of the patient’s voice and rhythm of the sentences conveying meaning? e.g. the rise in tone at the end of a question

Thought Part 4 of 11

Describing the disturbance of a patient’s thoughts is one of the most challenging tasks, as it is impossible to know what patients are actually thinking, thus it has to be inferred from their speech and behaviour.

Problems with thinking are considered in the MSE under three headings:

Thought form i.e. how the patient is thinking
Thought content i.e. what the patient is thinking (the beliefs they hold)
Thought possession i.e. Schneider’s first-rank symptoms which are a group of symptoms which have special significance in the diagnosis of schizophrenia

Thought Form Part 5 of 11

Thought form deals with the ‘mechanics’ of the patient’s thoughts i.e. how the patient is thinking. This is of diagnostic use as in many psychiatric disorders, thinking ‘slips’ to a less sophisticated level as a consequence of the illness.

This results in disorders of thought form, where the ability to express ideas cogently and coherently is compromised or lost completely. The stream of goal-directed thought is disrupted by irrelevancies to the extent that the goal gets lost.

The first thing to note, therefore, is how easy is it for you to follow what the person is saying…

Do you have a sense of where they are going with their thoughts?

Do they go off on a lot of tangents?
Do they seem to be including too much information?
Do they eventually get to the ‘goal’ or not?
Do their thoughts seem to jump from one ‘connection’ to another really quickly?
Are these break-points logical or is it hard to see the connections?

Thought Content Part 6 of 11

Thought content deals with the beliefs the patient holds and the prominent themes that arise within them i.e. what the patient is thinking.

Some questions that you may find useful in assessing disorders of thought content are…

What are the prominent themes of the person’s thinking?
Are they preoccupied with anything in particular?
Are these themes only revealed in response to your questioning, or were they raised spontaneously?
Are they congruent with the patient’s mood?
How amenable to discussion and alternative explanation are core beliefs?

The key pathologies of belief psychiatrists are most concerned with are primary and secondary delusions , or overvalued ideas , and obsessions .

Delusions Part 7 of 11

A delusion is an unshakeable false belief that is not accepted by other members of the patient’s culture

To the patient, there is no difference between a delusional belief and a true belief – they are the same experience.
Therefore, only an external observer can diagnose a delusion.
The delusion is false because of faulty reasoning E.g. a man’s delusional belief that his wife is having an affair may actually be true (she may indeed be unfaithful), but it remains a delusion because he reason he gives for this belief is undoubtedly false, for example, she ‘must’ be having an affair because she is part of a top-secret sexual conspiracy to prove that he is a homosexual.
It is out of keeping with the patient’s social and cultural background E.g. a belief in the imminent second coming of Christ may be appropriate for a member of a religious group, but not for a formerly atheist, middle-aged business man.

Overvalued Ideas Part 8 of 11

An overvalued idea is a plausible belief that a patient becomes pre-occupied with to an unreasonable extent. The key feature is that the pursuit of this idea cause considerable distress to the patient or those living around them.

They are distinguished from delusions by the lack of gross abnormality in reasoning; these patients can often give fairly logical reasons for their beliefs.

They differ from obsessions in that they are not seen as recurrent intrusions.

Thought Possession Part 9 of 11

Thought possession, also falls under thought content in that it involves delusions of control in which there is a false belief that one’s thoughts, feelings, actions or impulses are controlled or ‘made’ by an external agency, e.g. believing that one was made to break a window by demons.

Delusions of thought control include:

Thought insertion : belief that thoughts or ideas are being implanted in one’s head by an external agency

E.g. ‘the patient repeatedly complains of having disturbingly violent thoughts, which, she claims, are being sent to her by Satan’

Thought withdrawal : belief that one’s thoughts or ideas are being extracted from one’s head by an external agency

E.g. ‘the man continually blames his poor memory on “government agents” who he claims are able to steal his thoughts’

Thought broadcasting : belief that one’s thoughts are being diffused or broadcast to others such that they know what one is thinking

Eg: ‘a woman refuses to explain her problem, saying, “I know you know what I’m thinking. Everybody hears what I’m thinking.”

Questions Part 10 of 11

Summary part 11 of 11.

Please answer each of the following questions. All results are completely anonymous and used for quality assurance purposes only.

Q1. How would you rate the information on this particular page?

Q2. would you use this website again.

Yes No Maybe

Q3. Would you recommend this website to other people?

Q4. did you experience any problems viewing this page, answering the questions, or navigating the site.

Module 8: Delivering Your Speech

Emphasis, volume, and pauses, learning objectives.

Identify effective uses of emphasis in your speech.
Explain how to achieve the ideal volume when speaking.
Identify appropriate uses of pauses in your speech.

One of the other things our voices do naturally is emphasize certain words in a sentence. This emphasis tells the listener what’s important in the sentence and brings clarity of meaning. For example, in the old tongue twister “Sally sells seashells by the seashore,” the speaker decides what is most important for the audience by bolding it with their voice. This type of inflection could be to get louder or go up to a higher pitch on certain words, which creates variety and calls attention to the important words of a sentence. Again, if a voice is lacking such variety, the speaker may sound monotone. Using our example, let’s say the speaker decided to emphasize who was selling the seashells. The vocal interpretation would look like:

SALLY sells seashells by the seashore. (This inflection assumes the audience knows Sally and will go look for her.)

Another choice might be to emphasize where she’s selling the seashells so the audience knows her location. That sentence might look like:

Sally sells seashells by the SEASHORE.

Practice saying these sentences using the emphasis techniques above. Generally, there are at least two important words per sentence. You can underline or bold the words you want to emphasize in each sentence on your speech outline.

If being loud enough is difficult for you, go back to working on the breathing we discussed before. When you are breathing correctly from the diaphragm, the sound quality is projected naturally from the stomach area and can easily travel out of the mouth to the back of the room. As you speak, think about your voice being a ball that hits the back wall behind the audience and aim for it.

Volume can also be varied to give some energy and excitement to the speech. Just like we did with mixing the rate of speech, you can also pick words or phrases to be louder or softer when you speak. Raising your voice can perk up an audience. Going softer can also make them lean in to hear what you are saying. Be careful when using a soft voice to not be so soft you can’t be heard. If you use proper, and even a bit overly done, diction when being softer, the audience will still hear you. As noted before, mark down on your notecards or speech outline where you will get louder or softer.

Combining all these vocal practices will make you sound like a polished speaker!

Power of the Pause

One final note about pausing versus the vocalization of pauses such as ah , ums , like , etc. Instead of using the filler words ah and um , try to take a breath and pause instead. Speakers sometimes feel the pressure to fill dead air with sound. Resist this urge. In fact, while you may be looking through your notecards for something you wanted to mention, a pause gives the audience time to catch up and absorb what you’ve just said. Our nervousness often makes us want to fill the space so the audience doesn’t get bored. There’s no need to do so. Ah s and um s can also make a speaker sound unprofessional and lacking in confidence, so do the best you can to eliminate them from your speech.

To Watch: Reggie Watts

In the spoken part of this PopTech talk, improvisational performer and musician Reggie Watts manipulates various aspects of vocal delivery—pitch, rate, emphasis, volume, and pauses—to make total nonsense sound like the kind of speech you’d hear at a conference like PopTech or TED.

You can view the transcript for “Reggie Watts: A send-off in style” here (opens in new window) .

What to watch for:

At 12:28, for instance, Watts does a remarkable imitation of TED or PopTech style speeches. The words are ridiculous, but the loaded pauses and changes in pace and pitch make this nonsense sound profound: “Now we all know that poverty is super easy to fix. And using modular dynamicism we can recreate, unfold, resequence, understand, and reshape the way we think of thought itself. By constantly monitoring thought itself it will not only lead you nowhere, it will give you a headache. So try not to do that. Instead, try to do something that’s way outside of the box—like someplace that if you were to see how far away from the box you were, you wouldn’t even be able to tell what that box was anymore compared to the landscape that you’re comparing it against. Getting outside of the box is more than just getting out of a box and walking away. As children know, sometimes boxes are very difficult to get out of.”

Megaphone. Authored by : Thesupermat. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Festival_du_Bout_du_Monde_2017_-_Imany_-_010.jpg . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Reggie Watts: A send-off in style. Authored by : poptech. Located at : https://youtu.be/ABm7DuBwJd8 . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
Emphasis, Volume, Pauses. Authored by : Misti Wills with Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

10.3 Vocal Delivery

Learning objectives.

Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech more engaging.
Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech clearer.
Discuss the relationship between vocal delivery and speaker credibility.

Vocal delivery includes components of speech delivery that relate to your voice. These include rate, volume, pitch, articulation, pronunciation, and fluency. Our voice is important to consider when delivering our speech for two main reasons. First, vocal delivery can help us engage and interest the audience. Second, vocal delivery helps ensure that our ideas are communicated clearly.

Speaking for Engagement

We have all had the displeasure of listening to an unengaging speaker. Even though the person may care about his or her topic, an unengaging delivery that doesn’t communicate enthusiasm will translate into a lack of interest for most audience members. Although a speaker can be visually engaging by incorporating movement and gestures, which we will discuss more later, a flat or monotone vocal delivery can be sedating or even annoying. Incorporating vocal variety in terms of rate, volume, and pitch is key to being a successful speaker.

Rate of speaking refers to how fast or slow you speak. If you speak too fast, your audience will not be able to absorb the information you present. If you speak too slowly, the audience may lose interest. The key is to vary your rate of speaking in a middle range, staying away from either extreme, in order to keep your audience engaged. In general, a higher rate of speaking signals that a speaker is enthusiastic about his or her topic. Speaking slowly may lead the audience to infer that the speaker is uninterested, uninformed, or unprepared to present his or her own topic. These negative assumptions, whether they are true or not, are likely to hurt the credibility of the speaker. Having evaluated thousands of speeches, I can say that, in terms of rate, the issue speakers face is speaking too fast. The goal is to speak at a rate that will interest the audience and will effectively convey your information. Speaking at a slow rate throughout a speech would likely bore an audience, but that is not a common occurrence.

Some people naturally speak faster than others, which is fine, but we can all alter our rate of speaking with practice. If you find that you are a naturally fast speaker, make sure that you do not “speed talk” through your speech when practicing it. Even if you try to hold back when actually delivering your speech, you may fall back into your practice routine and speak too fast. You can also include reminders to “slow down” on your speaking outline.

Volume refers to how loud or soft your voice is. As with speaking rate, you want to avoid the extremes of being too loud or too soft, but still vary your volume within an acceptable middle range. When speaking in a typically sized classroom or office setting that seats about twenty-five people, using a volume a few steps above a typical conversational volume is usually sufficient. When speaking in larger rooms, you will need to project your voice. You may want to look for nonverbal cues from people in the back rows or corners, like leaning forward or straining to hear, to see if you need to adjust your volume more. Obviously, in some settings, a microphone will be necessary to be heard by the entire audience. Like rate, audiences use volume to make a variety of judgments about a speaker. Softer speakers are sometimes judged as meek, which may lead to lowered expectations for the speech or less perceived credibility. Loud speakers may be seen as overbearing or annoying, which can lead audience members to disengage from the speaker and message. Be aware of the volume of your voice and, when in doubt, increase your volume a notch, since beginning speakers are more likely to have an issue of speaking too softly rather than too loudly.

Speak a couple steps above your regular volume for speeches that occur in typically sized classrooms or meeting rooms that seat twenty to forty people. A microphone may be necessary for larger groups or rooms.

Speaker at Podium – CC BY 2.0.

Pitch refers to how high or low a speaker’s voice is. As with other vocal qualities, there are natural variations among people’s vocal pitch. Unlike rate and volume, there are more physiological limitations on the control we have over pitch. For example, males generally have lower pitched voices than females. Despite these limitations, each person still has the capability to intentionally change their pitch across a range large enough to engage an audience. Changing pitch is a good way to communicate enthusiasm and indicate emphasis or closure. In general, our pitch goes up when we are discussing something exciting. Our pitch goes down slightly when we emphasize a serious or important point. Lowering pitch is also an effective way to signal transitions between sections of your speech or the end of your speech, which cues your audience to applaud and avoids an awkward ending.

Of the vocal components of delivery discussed so far, pitch seems to give beginning speakers the most difficulty. There is a stark difference between the way I hear students speak before and after class and the way they speak when they get in front of the class. It’s like giving a speech temporarily numbs their ability to vary their pitch. Record yourself practicing your speech to help determine if the amount of pitch variety and enthusiasm you think you convey while speaking actually comes through. Speakers often assume that their pitch is more varied and their delivery more enthusiastic than the audience actually perceives it to be. Many of my students note this on the self-evaluations they write after viewing their recorded speech.

Vocal Variety

Overall, the lesson to take away from this section on vocal delivery is that variety is key. Vocal variety includes changes in your rate, volume, and pitch that can make you look more prepared, seem more credible, and be able to engage your audience better. Employing vocal variety is not something that takes natural ability or advanced skills training. It is something that beginning speakers can start working on immediately and everyone can accomplish. The key is to become aware of how you use your voice when you speak, and the best way to do this is to record yourself. We all use vocal variety naturally without thinking about it during our regular conversations, and many of us think that this tendency will translate over to our speaking voices. This is definitely not the case for most beginning speakers. Unlike in your regular conversations, it will take some awareness and practice to use vocal variety in speeches. I encourage students to make this a delivery priority early on. Since it’s something anyone can do, improving in this area will add to your speaking confidence, which usually translates into better speeches and better grades further on.

Speaking for Clarity

In order to be an effective speaker, your audience should be able to understand your message and digest the information you present. Audience members will make assumptions about our competence and credibility based on how we speak. As with other aspects of speech delivery, many people are not aware that they have habits of speech that interfere with their message clarity. Since most of our conversations are informal and take place with people we know, many people don’t make a concerted effort to articulate every word clearly and pronounce every word correctly, and most of the people we talk to either don’t notice our errors or don’t correct us if they do notice. Since public speaking is generally more formal than our conversations, we should be more concerned with the clarity of our speech.

Articulation

Articulation refers to the clarity of sounds and words we produce. If someone is articulate, they speak words clearly, and speakers should strive to speak clearly. Poor articulation results when speakers do not speak clearly. For example, a person may say dinnt instead of didn’t , gonna instead of going to , wanna instead of want to , or hunnerd instead of hundred . Unawareness and laziness are two common challenges to articulation. As with other aspects of our voice, many people are unaware that they regularly have errors in articulation. Recording yourself speak and then becoming a higher self-monitor are effective ways to improve your articulation. Laziness, on the other hand, requires a little more motivation to address. Some people just get in the habit of not articulating their words well. I’m sure we all know someone who mumbles when they speak or slurs their words together. From my experience, this is a problem that I’ve noticed more among men than women. Both mumbling and slurring are examples of poor articulation. In more informal settings, this type of speaking may be acceptable, but in formal settings, it will be negatively evaluated, which will hurt a speaker’s credibility. Perhaps the promise of being judged more favorably, which may help a person become more successful, is enough to motivate a mumbler to speak more clearly.

When combined with a low volume, poor articulation becomes an even greater problem. Doing vocal warm-ups like the ones listed in Section 10.1 “Managing Public Speaking Anxiety” or tongue twisters can help prime your mouth, lips, and tongue to articulate words more clearly. When you notice that you have trouble articulating a particular word, you can either choose a different word to include in your speech or you can repeat it a few times in a row in the days leading up to your speech to get used to saying it.

Pronunciation

Unlike articulation, which focuses on the clarity of words, pronunciation refers to speaking words correctly, including the proper sounds of the letters and the proper emphasis. Mispronouncing words can damage a speaker’s credibility, especially when the correct pronunciation of a word is commonly known. I have actually heard someone, presenting on the topic of pronunciation, mispronounce the word pronunciation , saying “pro-NOUN-ciation” instead of “pro-NUN-ciation.” In such a case, it would not be unwarranted for the audience to question the speaker’s expertise on the subject.

We all commonly run into words that we are unfamiliar with and therefore may not know how to pronounce. I offer my students three suggestions when faced with this problem. The first is to look the word up in an online dictionary. Many dictionaries have a speaker icon with their definitions, and when you click on it, you can hear the correct pronunciation of a word. Some words have more than one pronunciation—for example, Caribbean —so choosing either of the accepted pronunciations is fine. Just remember to consistently use that pronunciation to avoid confusing your audience. If a word doesn’t include an audio pronunciation, you can usually find the phonetic spelling of a word, which is the word spelled out the way it sounds. There will occasionally be words that you can’t locate in a dictionary. These are typically proper nouns or foreign words. In this case, I suggest the “phone-a-friend” strategy. Call up the people you know who have large vocabularies or are generally smart when it comes to words, and ask them if they know how to pronounce it. If they do, and you find them credible, you’re probably safe to take their suggestion. The third option is to “fake it ‘til you make it” and should only be used as a last resort. If you can’t find the word in a dictionary and your smart friends don’t know how to pronounce it, it’s likely that your audience will also be unfamiliar with the word. In that case, using your knowledge of how things are typically pronounced, decide on a pronunciation that makes sense and confidently use it during your speech. Most people will not question it. In the event that someone does correct you on your pronunciation, thank him or her for correcting you and adjust your pronunciation.

Fluency refers to the flow of your speaking. To speak with fluency means that your speech flows well and that there are not many interruptions to that flow. There are two main disfluencies, or problems that affect the flow of a speech. Fluency hiccups are unintended pauses in a speech that usually result from forgetting what you were saying, being distracted, or losing your place in your speaking notes. Fluency hiccups are not the same as intended pauses, which are useful for adding emphasis or transitioning between parts of a speech. While speakers should try to minimize fluency hiccups, even experienced speakers need to take an unintended pause sometimes to get their bearings or to recover from an unexpected distraction. Fluency hiccups become a problem when they happen regularly enough to detract from the speaker’s message.

Verbal fillers are words that speakers use to fill in a gap between what they were saying and what they’re saying next. Common verbal fillers include um , uh , ah , er , you know , and like . The best way to minimize verbal fillers is to become a higher self-monitor and realize that you use them. Many students are surprised when they watch the video of their first speech and realize they said “um” thirty times in three minutes. Gaining that awareness is the first step in eliminating verbal fillers, and students make noticeable progress with this between their first and second speeches. If you do lose your train of thought, having a brief fluency hiccup is better than injecting a verbal filler, because the audience may not even notice the pause or may think it was intentional.

Common Causes of Fluency Hiccups

Lack of preparation. Effective practice sessions are the best way to prevent fluency hiccups.
Not writing for speaking. If you write your speech the way you’ve been taught to write papers, you will have fluency hiccups. You must translate the written words into something easier for you to present orally. To do this, read your speech aloud and edit as you write to make sure your speech is easy for you to speak.
A poorly prepared speaking outline. Whether it is on paper or note cards, sloppy writing, unorganized bullet points, or incomplete/insufficient information on a speaking outline leads to fluency hiccups.
Distractions. Audience members and the external environment are unpredictable. Hopefully audience members will be polite and will silence their phones, avoid talking while the speaker is presenting, and avoid moving excessively. There could also be external noise that comes through a door or window. A speaker can also be distracted by internal noise such as thinking about other things.

“Getting Plugged In”

Delivering Presentations Online

As many people and organizations are trying to do more with smaller budgets, and new software becomes available, online presentations are becoming more common. Whether using a Webinar format, a WebEx, Skype, FaceTime, Elluminate Live, or some other program, the live, face-to-face audience is now mediated through a computer screen. Despite this change in format, many of the same basic principles of public speaking apply when speaking to people virtually. Yet many business professionals seem to forget the best practices of public speaking when presenting online or don’t get that they apply in both settings. The website TheVirtualPresenter.com offers many tips for presenting online that we’ve covered in this book, including be audience focused, have engaging delivery, and use visual aids effectively (Courville, 2012). Yet speakers need to think about some of these things differently when presenting online. We have natural ways to engage an audience when presenting face-to-face, but since many online presentations are only one-way in terms of video, speakers have to rely on technology like audience polls, live chat, or options for audience members to virtually raise their hand when they have a question to get feedback while speaking. Also, in some formats, the audience can only see the presenter’s computer desktop or slide show, which pulls attention away from physical delivery and makes vocal delivery and visual aids more important. Extemporaneous delivery and vocal variety are still key when presenting online. Reading from your slides or having a monotone voice will likely not make a favorable impression on your audience. The lesson to take away is that presenting online requires the same skills as presenting in person, so don’t let the change in format lead you to make mistakes that will make you a less effective speaker.

Have you ever presented online or been an audience member for an online presentation? If so, describe your experience and compare it to face-to-face speaking.
What are some of the key differences between presenting online and presenting in person that a speaker should consider?
How might online presentations play into your future career goals? What types of presentations do you think you would give? What could you do to ensure the presentations are effective?

Key Takeaways

Speakers should use vocal variety, which is changes in rate, volume, and pitch, to make a speech more engaging.
Speakers should use proper articulation and pronunciation to make their message clear.
Interruptions to the fluency of a speech, including fluency hiccups and verbal fillers, detract from the speaker’s message and can lessen a speaker’s credibility.
Record yourself practicing your speech. How does your speech sound in terms of vocal variety? Cite specific examples.
Listen to your recorded speech again. How would you evaluate your articulation and pronunciation? Cite specific examples.
Over the course of a day, take note of verbal fillers that you tend to use. List them here so you can be a higher self-monitor and begin to notice and lessen your use of them.

Courville, R., “Delivery,” TheVirtualPresenter.com, accessed November 5, 2012, http://thevirtualpresenter.com/category/delivery .

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Volume and the Public Speaker: Be Heard and Be Effective

Before your message can transform your audience, the sound of your voice must be heard by your audience. It sounds really simple, but I’m shocked by how often I have to strain to hear a presenter.

In this article, we examine strategies for being heard and varying speech volume to improve your effectiveness .

Goal 1: Be Heard

Your first goal is to be comfortably heard by everyone in the audience. If they cannot hear your voice, then you cannot deliver a message to them.

Here are several strategies and discrete actions you can take to help your audience hear you better:

Strategy 1 – Minimize noise distractions

Any noise that isn’t your voice will be a distraction to your audience. Loud noises will obviously create challenges, but even soft noises can be an irritation for your audience.

Close doors or windows to shut out noisy vacuums, lawn mowers, traffic, or any other external noise. Use common sense, though. If the closed room gets uncomfortable, you may need to deal with the external noise.
Don’t be the distracting noise . Avoid nervously clicking a pen. Don’t wear noisy jewellery. Avoid wearing clothing which makes noise as you move.
If necessary, deal with chatterers . It can be uncomfortable to police this behavior, but you owe it to those who want to listen.
Don’t talk over laughter or applause . It’s a very common mistake to begin speaking while the opening applause is still happening. The result? Your audience may not hear the first words out of your mouth — terrible! Be patient, and wait your turn.

Strategy 2 – Minimize the distance to the audience

The physics of sound is simple. If you decrease the distance between you and your audience, you will be louder for them. (Actually, your volume varies as the inverse square of the distance, but let’s avoid mathematics in this article.)

So, get closer! It can make a big difference.

Move your audience closer to you . When teaching corporate seminars, I’ll often move all of the chairs and tables 10 feet closer to the front of the room. It only takes me a minute or two, and it helps me avoid straining my voice for an entire afternoon. (It also gets my audience closer to the projection screen — another benefit!)
Move yourself closer to your audience . Maybe your audience can’t move closer (e.g. fixed theatre seating). In this case, try moving closer to them.
Block the seats in the back. If you know that your audience is smaller than the number of seats available, block the seats in the back. This gets everyone sitting closer.
Move to a smaller room . Usually, you are stuck with the venue you are given. But if you have a choice, try to match the room to the size of your audience. Speaking to 30 people in an auditorium creates volume challenges unnecessarily (and makes it less intimate, too). Speaking to 30 people in a seminar room is a better acoustic fit.

“ Before your message can transform your audience, the sound of your voice must be heard by your audience. ”

Strategy 3 – Raise your volume to reach the person in the back row

Project your voice. It’s not only about speaking louder, but also speaking with more resonance. It takes practice.
Use a microphone. If a microphone is available at the venue, you should probably use it. Practice if you are not accustomed to speaking with a microphone.
Articulate clearly. It’s remarkable how just focusing on articulation brings your volume up considerably.
Practice good posture . Stand tall and lean slightly forward. Your voice will carry farther.

Strategy 4 – Adapt as necessary

Ask the audience. Sure, it’s boring, but if you are in doubt, ask the audience if they can hear you. Look for positive feedback from people in the back. It shows you care.
Look for non-verbal feedback from audience . Are they straining forward to hear you? Are they cupping their hand over their ear? You need to speak louder.
Microphone stops working? Act quickly. Get the audience to move in closer, or raise your own volume.
Speech Pauses
Filler Words (um, ah)
Speaking Rate
Vocal Volume
Vocal Projection
Vocal Strength Exercises

Goal 2: Be Effective

Okay, your audience can comfortably hear you. Great. But that’s not enough. To maximize your effectiveness, you must vary your volume strategically throughout.

Vary your volume . Speaking for any length of time at the same volume (whether loud or soft) puts people to sleep. Just as gestures and body movement create visual interest, varying your volume creates vocal interest.
Emphasize target words or phrases by speaking louder or softer (as appropriate).
Mirror emotional content with volume changes. For example, when sharing a sad story, your volume should naturally drop. Conversely, when sharing a story which has action or surprise, your volume should increase, building to a climax.
Finish sentences strong . Tailing off at the end of sentences is a common mistake made by speakers, often caused by looking back down at notes. The result? Your audience may miss the last word or two at the end of sentences, thus weakening your impact.
Start loud . It’s not a strict rule, but generally a good idea to open a notch louder than average. It grabs attention and demonstrates enthusiasm.
Finish loud . Also not a rule, but speaking louder helps create a rousing, confident finish. This is especially true in a persuasive or motivational speech.

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13 comments.

Nice tips. A guess the moral to the story is: remember who is in control. It’s either you or them, or the environment. I think making sure you modify the environment and not just yourself is an important idea often forgotten.

I agree, Aleks. Many speakers neglect to consider how they can optimize the environment for their audience.

I enjoy all of your articles. They are very helpful. Thank You, Marlene

Good stuff. So many speakers forget to pay attention to the environment (or simply choose not to).

Thanks Andrew, your tips are very helpful. Simple but really true

Really good post.

As Jenkin Lloyd Jones said:

“A speech is a solemn responsibility. The man who makes a bad 30 minute speech to 200 people wastes only half an hour of his own time. But he wastes 100 hours of the audience’s time – more than four days – which should be a hanging offence.”

I found those Articles a great learning tool . Very helpful.

This is quite helpful. Please can you send me your ebook materials on public speaking or communication. I really will be greatful for your support.

Ayo Oyewole

I noticed that you didn’t reference Q&A and how to deal with both bright or dumb questions. When I speak, I go into the audience for one-on-ones and then repeat the question with a response so the entire group can be involved.

Great info for people engaging in a talent show!

It’s really nice to keep getting tips likes this. Although, most of these are obvious and should be common practice, even then putting these all together and pen down is great job. Thank you veny much for giving all these mind blowing ideas for public speaking. It has made me more and more confident speaker day by day. Practising day by day and implementing the tips helps me out to improve and to look into the broader picture of speaking.

Some good points! Of course, breathing is a key to sounding better. But that’s its own topic.

Indeed, the importance of breathing is addressed here: Breathing: The Seductive Key to Unlocking Your Vocal Variety .

Recent Tweets

“Volume and the Public Speaker: Be Heard and Be Effective” #speaking http://t.co/IPrrI9yIHn — @Suman_Kher Apr 4th, 2015

ما هي أفضل الاستراتيجيات لجذب انتباه الحضور من خلال التحكم في مستوى نبرة صوتك؟! تعرّف عليها من خلال الرابط التالي: http://t.co/rCdBJkO2sB — @OmanConvention Aug 25th, 2015

Great tips for the Public Speaker http://t.co/5uPTbaIW45 by @6minutes — @VoiceVibes Sep 26th, 2015

Volume and the Public Speaker: Be Heard and Be Effective http://t.co/0pSCf4ISwl (A good blog for anyone who teaches/preaches) — @JimMartin Sep 28th, 2015

Demonstrate your audience that you mind by asking as to whether they can hear you then search for constructive… https://t.co/lvqYgkjcZh — @PSA_ProSpeakers Oct 27th, 2015

What is the right volume for a speaker? https://t.co/jDFUlQSzzk #PublicSpeaking — @VoiceSpeechHub Aug 23rd, 2016

Good tips here on volume for the Public Speaker: Be Heard and Be Effective https://t.co/n1f94WjpTL by @6minutes #protips — @beefrunner Aug 3rd, 2018

Another useful article from @6minutes: Volume and the Public Speaker: Be Heard and Be Effective #pitch… https://t.co/D4JVkH0Lin — Mel Sherwood – Pitch & Presentation Specialist (@MelSherwood_) Aug 5th, 2018

#FlashbackFriday the power of the vocal volume! #DaleCarnegieAT #speech #Training https://t.co/gL8TLhPvWN https://t.co/J3rZzdVW3S — @DaleCarnegieAT Aug 17th, 2018

Ever considered how your speech volume impacts your meetings and presentations? A good speaker will: ●Vary their sp… https://t.co/XIbTCA6MRM — @PackardCommun Nov 7th, 2018

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Learning Objectives

Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech more engaging.
Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech clearer.
Discuss the relationship between vocal delivery and speaker credibility.

Speaking for Engagement

Speaker at Podium – CC BY 2.0.

Vocal Variety

Common Causes of Fluency Hiccups

Lack of preparation. Effective practice sessions are the best way to prevent fluency hiccups.
Not writing for speaking. If you write your speech the way you’ve been taught to write papers, you will have fluency hiccups. You must translate the written words into something easier for you to present orally. To do this, read your speech aloud and edit as you write to make sure your speech is easy for you to speak.
A poorly prepared speaking outline. Whether it is on paper or note cards, sloppy writing, unorganized bullet points, or incomplete/insufficient information on a speaking outline leads to fluency hiccups.
Distractions. Audience members and the external environment are unpredictable. Hopefully audience members will be polite and will silence their phones, avoid talking while the speaker is presenting, and avoid moving excessively. There could also be external noise that comes through a door or window. A speaker can also be distracted by internal noise such as thinking about other things.

“Getting Plugged In”

Delivering Presentations Online

Have you ever presented online or been an audience member for an online presentation? If so, describe your experience and compare it to face-to-face speaking.
What are some of the key differences between presenting online and presenting in person that a speaker should consider?
How might online presentations play into your future career goals? What types of presentations do you think you would give? What could you do to ensure the presentations are effective?

Key Takeaways

Speakers should use vocal variety, which is changes in rate, volume, and pitch, to make a speech more engaging.
Interruptions to the fluency of a speech, including fluency hiccups and verbal fillers, detract from the speaker’s message and can lessen a speaker’s credibility.
Record yourself practicing your speech. How does your speech sound in terms of vocal variety? Cite specific examples.
Over the course of a day, take note of verbal fillers that you tend to use. List them here so you can be a higher self-monitor and begin to notice and lessen your use of them.

Courville, R., “Delivery,” TheVirtualPresenter.com, accessed November 5, 2012, http://thevirtualpresenter.com/category/delivery .

Volume Variation In Public Speaking – The Ultimate Guide

Volume control is an important factor that can elevate your public speaking skills drastically. You must’ve noticed not being able to hear the speaker during a class presentation. Maybe you yourself were that shy speaker whose voice wasn’t loud enough for the whole crowd to hear.

Sentence Stress

Speed of speech, be loud enough to reach the back, control your volume based on the type of speech you are delivering, start loud and finish loud, ask for feedback, want to enhance your public speaking skills.

Variation in volume is not just about increasing and decreasing the loudness of your voice. It encompasses other factors as well — pitch variation, tone, sentence stress, speed of your words, pauses, etc.

Vocalics is the non-verbal part of communication in which we sort all the above-mentioned factors.

To execute an impactful public presentation, you must be aware of how all these factors affect your speaking, and how to use them efficiently. Podium Blog brings you the fundamentals of how to help you in enhancing your public speaking skills .

What is Vocalics and Why is It Important

Vocalics is the study of the non-lexical components of communication, focusing mainly on the elements relating to the voice of the speaker.

If you have a monotone, the message is not conveyed precisely, and creates a barrier between the audience and the speaker. When your speech has alternating tones and pitch, and the volume changes according to the content, it creates a much more appealing effect.

To understand how to volume variations , we need to understand a few other terms-

Perhaps the most important element is public speaking. As the phrase suggests, sentence stress is emphasizing on a specific word. This is usually done to highlight an important part, which might be a word or a phrase.

You will be shocked to know how much the sentence stress can change the meaning of a simple statement. For example, in the following sentences, emphasize the italics only –

He stole my money.

I am sure you can notice the difference in all the sentences.

In writing , when we want to emphasize a certain part, we italicize it. While speaking, when we want to stress over a word or phrase, we raise our volume and pitch.

If we speak too fast, the audience will fail to comprehend whatever we are presenting. And if we speak too slowly, the audience will get bored and doze off. People with stage fright often go either too fast or take a lot of pauses, reflecting their nervousness.

Hence, adjust the rate of your speech according to the topic, audience, and your self-confidence .

Tips To Vary Your Volume Accordingly

The central tenet of volume variation is to incite emotions and reactions among the audience, be it a positive emotion or negative emotion.

Here are some tips which will help you to reach that goal

Project your speech loud enough that it reaches the back of the location, whether it be a class or an auditorium. If the number of audiences is less, acquire a smaller place. Presenting in a larger space with less is unnecessary.

Observe the audience to know if you are audible at the back. The people sitting at the back often lean closer to the speaker to hear better, so watch out for body language cues.

This is applicable if the mic is not available. If you do have a mic, adjust the mic stand according to your height and standing or sitting position.

Although the mic has its own volume setting, yet it is important to maintain a certain volume level, which is not very loud — just the normal way you talk. Don’t speak too loudly, it might create reverberation,

There are 4 types of creative writing speeches — expository, descriptive, narrative , and persuasive . The way your volume levels will alter is dependent on the type of speech you are delivering.

For example, if a person is reporting news, their tone would most likely be monotonous as they don’t wish to stir up sentiments among the public. Their sole purpose is to report the information.

While presenting a persuasive speech, you will increase and decrease more often as compared to other forms. This is because persuasive forms are based on encouraging strong emotions within the audience and compelling them for a call to action.

While narrating a story , your voice and volume will determine how the audience reacts. The emotions stirring up in your audience are the reflection of your voice.

You will not have a high pitched jolly tone while narrating a tragic event. The volume variations would be less here. If one intends to highlight an important part, they must opt to sentence stress instead of suddenly raising their voice.

If you are trying to build up suspense, you might lower your voice, and raise it at the sudden plot twist.

Although it is not necessary to start out loud, it is encouraged to initiate your presentation with a loud and powerful introduction . It alerts your audience and sets up a mood where the people would be attentive.

The same goes for finishing loud. When you conclude your topic, raise your voice so that it leaves an impact on your audience.

Have a look at this enlightening TED Talk which talks about vocal awareness.

There is no shame in asking for feedback in between your speech. You are allowed to ask questions such as “Am I audible to everyone?” or “Are you following what I am saying?”. In fact, asking such questions makes your speech more interactive.

Public speaking is about poise and voice, and presentation and content. Creating enlightening content is just as important as delivering it efficiently. You can have amazing and informative content but would be in vain if not delivered efficiently, and vice versa.

We, at Podium School , are here to assist you in public speaking as well as creating the content you need to deliver. From stage frigh t to mind blanks , from good grammar to literary devices , we have a solution to all of your problems.

Check out the Public Speaking Blog as well as the Creative Writing Blog to enhance your skills!

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Definition of volume

(Entry 1 of 3)

Definition of volume (Entry 2 of 3)

transitive verb

intransitive verb

Definition of volume (Entry 3 of 3)

lashings [ chiefly British ]
lashins
multiplicity

bulk , mass , volume mean the aggregate that forms a body or unit.

bulk implies an aggregate that is impressively large, heavy, or numerous.

mass suggests an aggregate made by piling together things of the same kind.

volume applies to an aggregate without shape or outline and capable of flowing or fluctuating.

Examples of volume in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'volume.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin volumen roll, scroll, from volvere to roll — more at wallow entry 1

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 4a

1815, in the meaning defined at transitive sense

circa 1945, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing volume

alcohol by volume

Articles Related to volume

Parts of a Book: Quire, Colophon, and...

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Dictionary Entries Near volume

volume color

Cite this Entry

“Volume.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/volume. Accessed 27 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of volume.

Middle English volume "a book, a scroll of papyrus," from early French (same meaning), from Latin volumen "roll, scroll," from volvere "to roll" — related to revolve

Medical Definition

Medical definition of volume, more from merriam-webster on volume.

Nglish: Translation of volume for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of volume for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about volume

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18.7: Vocal Delivery

Learning objectives.

Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech clearer.
Discuss the relationship between vocal delivery and speaker credibility.

Vocal delivery includes components of speech delivery that relate to your voice: rate, volume, pitch, articulation, pronunciation, and fluency. Our voice is important to consider when delivering our speech for two main reasons. First, vocal delivery can help us engage and interest the audience. Second, vocal delivery helps ensure that our ideas are communicated clearly.

Speaking for Engagement

We have all had the displeasure of listening to unengaging speakers. Unengaging delivery that doesn’t communicate enthusiasm translates into a lack of interest for most audience members, even if the speaker genuinely cares about the topic. Although a speaker can be visually engaging by incorporating movement and gestures, which we will discuss more later, a flat or monotone vocal delivery can be sedating or even annoying. Incorporating vocal variety in terms of rate, volume, and pitch is key to being a successful speaker.

Rate of speaking refers to how fast/slow your speech is. If you speak too fast, your audience will not be able to absorb the information you present. If you speak too slowly, the audience may lose interest. The key is to vary your rate of speaking in a middle range, staying away from either extreme, in order to keep your audience engaged.

In general, a higher rate of speaking signals that a speaker is enthusiastic about his or her topic — but speaking too fast might prevent your audience from following your argumentation and they might stop listening for that reason. If you find that you are a naturally fast speaker, make sure that you do not “speed talk” through your speech when practicing it. Even if you try to hold back when actually delivering your speech, you may fall back into your practice routine and speak too fast. You can also include reminders to “slow down” on your speaking outline.

Speaking too slowly may lead the audience to infer that the speaker is uninterested, uninformed, or unprepared to present the topic. These negative assumptions, whether they are true or not, are likely to hurt the credibility of the speaker.

As with rate, audiences use volume to make a variety of judgments about a speaker. Softer speakers are sometimes judged as meek, which may lead to lowered expectations for the speech or less perceived credibility. Loud speakers may be seen as overbearing or annoying, which can lead audience members to disengage from the speaker and message. Be aware of the volume of your voice and, when in doubt, increase your volume a notch, since beginning speakers are more likely to speak too softly rather than too loudly.

Pitch refers to how high or low a speaker’s voice is. As with other vocal qualities, there are natural variations among people’s vocal pitch. Unlike rate and volume, there are more physiological limitations on the control we have over pitch. For example, men generally have lower-pitched voices than women. Despite these limitations, we all have the capability to intentionally change our pitch across a range large enough to engage an audience. Changing pitch is a good way to communicate enthusiasm and indicate emphasis or closure. In general, our pitch goes up when we are discussing something exciting. Our pitch goes down slightly when we emphasize a serious or important point. Lowering pitch is also an effective way to signal transitions between sections of your speech or the end of your speech, which cues your audience to applaud and avoids an awkward ending.

Of the vocal components of delivery discussed so far, pitch seems to give beginning speakers the most difficulty. There is usually a stark difference between the way students speak before and after a class and the way they speak when they get in front of the class — as if giving a speech temporarily numbs their ability to vary their pitch. Record yourself practicing your speech/presentation to determine if the amount of pitch variety and enthusiasm you think you convey while speaking actually comes through. Speakers often assume that their pitch is more varied and their delivery more enthusiastic than the audience actually perceives it to be.

Vocal Variety

Overall, the lesson to take away from this section on vocal delivery is that variety is key. Vocal variety includes changes in your rate, volume, and pitch that can make you look more prepared, seem more credible, and be able to engage your audience better. Employing vocal variety is not something that takes natural ability or advanced skills training. It is something that beginning speakers can start working on immediately and everyone can accomplish. The key is to become aware of how you use your voice when you speak, and the best way to do this is to record yourself. We all use vocal variety naturally without thinking about it during our regular conversations, and many of us think that this tendency will translate over to our speaking voices. This is definitely not the case for most beginning speakers. Unlike in your regular conversations, it will take some awareness and practice to use vocal variety in speeches/presentations, but improving in this area will add to your speaking confidence, which usually translates into better grades and better public speaking skills further on.

Speaking for Clarity

Articulation

Articulation refers to the clarity of sounds and words we produce, and speakers should strive to speak clearly, avoiding ooor articulation. For example, a person may say dinnt instead of didn’t , gonna instead of going to , wanna instead of want to , or hunnerd instead of hundred . Unawareness and laziness are two common challenges to articulation. As with other aspects of our voice, many people are unaware that they regularly have errors in articulation. Recording yourself speaking and then becoming a higher self-monitor are effective ways to improve your articulation. Laziness, on the other hand, requires a little more motivation to address. Some people just get in the habit of not articulating their words well. We all know people who mumble when they speak or slur their words together. This problem tends to be displayed by men more than women — probably because overconfidence is more common among men. Both mumbling and slurring are examples of poor articulation. In more informal settings, this type of speaking may be acceptable, but in formal settings, it will be negatively evaluated, which will hurt a speaker’s credibility. Perhaps the promise of being judged more favorably, which may help a person become more successful, is enough to motivate a mumbler to speak more clearly.

When combined with a low volume, poor articulation becomes an even greater problem. Doing vocal warm-ups like the ones listed in Section 18.5 “Managing Public Speaking Anxiety” or tongue twisters can help prime your mouth, lips, and tongue to articulate words more clearly. When you notice that you have trouble articulating a particular word, you can either choose a different word to include in your speech or you can repeat it a few times in a row in the days leading up to your speech to get used to saying it.

Pronunciation

On the other hand, we all commonly run into words that we are unfamiliar with and therefore may not know how to pronounce. In that case, we have three options. The first is to look the word up in an online dictionary. Many dictionaries have a speaker icon included, and when you click on it, you can hear the correct pronunciation of a word. Some words have more than one pronunciation, in which case choosing either of the accepted pronunciations is fine. Just remember to consistently use that pronunciation to avoid confusing your audience. If a word doesn’t include an audio pronunciation, you can usually find the phonetic spelling of a word, which is the word spelled out the way it sounds. There will occasionally be words that you can’t locate in a dictionary. These are typically proper nouns or foreign words. In this case, use the “phone-a-friend” strategy. Call up the people you know who have large vocabularies and ask them. If they know, and you find them credible, you’re probably safe to take their suggestions. The third option is to “fake it ‘til you make it” and should only be used as a last resort. If you can’t find the word in a dictionary and your friends don’t know how to pronounce it, it’s likely that your audience will also be unfamiliar with the word. In that case, using your knowledge of how things are typically pronounced, decide on a pronunciation that makes sense and confidently use it during your speech. Most people will not question it. In the event that someone does correct you on your pronunciation, thank him or her for correcting you and adjust your pronunciation.

Verbal fillers are words that speakers use to fill in a gap between what they were saying and what they say next. Common verbal fillers include um , uh , ah , er , you know , and like . The best way to minimize verbal fillers is to become a higher self-monitor and realize that you use them. Many students are surprised when they watch the video of their first speech and realize they said “um” thirty times in three minutes. Gaining that awareness is the first step in eliminating verbal fillers, and students make noticeable progress with this in time. If you do lose your train of thought, having a brief fluency hiccup is better than injecting a verbal filler, because the audience may not even notice the pause or may think it was intentional.

Lack of preparation. Effective practice sessions are the best way to prevent fluency hiccups.
Not writing for speaking. If you write your speech/ presentation outline/ presentation script the way you have been taught to write papers, you will have fluency hiccups. You must translate the written words into something easier for you to present orally. To do this, read your speech/presentation outline/presentation script aloud and edit as you write to bring everything closer to spoken language.
A poorly prepared speaking outline. Whether it is on paper or note cards, sloppy writing, unorganized bullet points, or incomplete/insufficient information on a speaking outline leads to fluency hiccups.
Distractions. Audience members and the external environment are unpredictable. Hopefully audience members will be polite and will silence their phones, avoid talking while the speaker is presenting, and avoid moving excessively. There could also be external noise that comes through a door or window. A speaker can also be distracted by internal noise such as thinking about other things.

Spotlight: “Getting Plugged In”

Delivering Presentations Online

We have natural ways to engage an audience when presenting face-to-face, but since many online presentations are only one-way in terms of video, speakers have to rely on technology like audience polls, live chat, or options for audience members to virtually raise their hand when they have a question to get feedback while speaking. Also, in some formats, the audience can only see the presenter’s computer desktop or slide show, which pulls attention away from physical delivery and makes vocal delivery and visual aids more important. Extemporaneous delivery and vocal variety are still key when presenting online. Reading from your slides or having a monotone voice will likely not make a favorable impression on your audience. The lesson to take away is that presenting online requires the same skills as presenting in person, so do not let the change in format lead you to make mistakes that will make you a less effective speaker.

Self-reflection and critical thinking questions:

Have you ever presented online or been an audience member for an online presentation? If so, describe your experience and compare it to face-to-face speaking.
What are some of the key differences between presenting online and presenting in person that a speaker should consider?
How might online presentations play into your future career goals? What types of presentations do you think you would give? What could you do to ensure the presentations are effective?

Key Takeaways

Speakers should use proper articulation and pronunciation to make their message clear.
Interruptions to the fluency of a speech, including fluency hiccups and verbal fillers, detract from the speaker’s message and can lessen a speaker’s credibility.

Listen to your recorded presentation again. How would you evaluate your articulation and pronunciation? Cite specific examples.
Over the course of a day, take note of verbal fillers that you tend to use. List them here so you can be a higher self-monitor and begin to notice and lessen your use of them.

Courville, R. (2012). Delivery. TheVirtualPresenter.com . http://thevirtualpresenter.com/category/delivery .

Advanced Professional Communication Copyright © 2021 by Melissa Ashman; Arley Cruthers; eCampusOntario; Ontario Business Faculty; and University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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English with Kim

Speak Up! Use Your Volume to Speak English More Effectively

I have a question for you, and I need you to be honest with me:

Do you think Americans are loud?

If you answered “yes,” don’t worry! I completely agree with you.

Whether we’re living our daily lives in the United States or traveling abroad, many non-native speakers hear Americans like me speaking English and they turn, look at us, and stare.

Americans are so loud!

I first noticed this when I moved to Argentina fifteen years ago. I would walk around Buenos Aires with my American friends, and I realized that everyone was staring at us.

My friends spoke both English AND Spanish with this incredibly high volume .

( As a shy person, I didn’t like attracting attention, so I controlled my volume more. But let’s be honest – I definitely don’t when I’m in my own country. ?)

But while you may think Americans are loud, the truth is, you’re probably not speaking loud enough !

Why Volume Matters when Speaking English

Volume plays an important role in speaking English clearly and effectively communicating ideas.

We use different levels of loudness to signal which words are important , what we want you to understand from our meaning, and which ideas most require your attention.

Culturally, being loud is something that Americans are used to.

While there are shy, quiet Americans just like in any other culture, most people expect you to speak up and express yourself using a variety of different levels of volume .

If you want to be understood by native English speakers, you need to start thinking more carefully and intentionally about your volume.

How we use volume to create english rhythm.

Beyond emphasizing important words or concepts, volume is also necessary when creating the natural rhythm of English .

After all, volume is an essential element of word stress.

When we stress a word, we make one syllable l-o-n-g-e-r, LOUDER , and higher in pitch .

(If you need more guidance on stress, start with my detailed article and video on Word Stress in American English .)

Today, we’re going to focus on LOUDER.

Even in a two-syllable word like “focus,” one syllable is l-o-n-g-e-r, LOUDER , and higher in pitch . To say focus correctly, you need to increase the volume on the stressed syllable, FO, in order to pronounce it correctly.

If you don’t make one syllable louder, the word is going to sound “off,” even if your pronunciation, vowel length, and pitch are all correct.

This increase in volume and emphasis on making one syllable LOUDER continues throughout the sentence .

The content words , or the most important words in the sentence, are the ones that receive this extra stress, emphasis, and volume.

(You can learn all about the difference between content words and function words in Sentence Stress in American English .)

The increase in volume makes it clear which words are the most important in the sentence.

You can make stressed syllables l-o-n-g-e-r and higher in pitch , but if you’re not consistently making them LOUDER, it’s going to be hard for native English speakers to understand you .

The good news? It’s easier to make a stressed syllable louder than it is to consistently make them longer or higher in pitch.

If you’re trying to reduce your accent in English, you probably want to start with your volume !

Why Your Volume Might Be Low

When you’re speaking a language that isn’t your first, you might feel a little embarrassed about your accent. (That’s how I used to feel when speaking Spanish.)

If you feel shy, you might decide to reduce the volume of your speech .

But this can actually just make matters more confusing! When native speakers can’t hear you, the problem is NOT actually your accent , it’s the fact that your volume is really low.

As we discussed earlier, native English speakers expect to hear more volume variety because it’s an essential part of how the language works.

So here’s the tough love: YOU NEED TO SPEAK UP.

You have to speak louder because we’re used to hearing people speak at a higher volume.

If you speak at a higher volume, we’re much more likely to understand you!

It really is that simple!

(By the way, this topic was recommended by a native Russian speaker who is currently living in the United States. She told me, “You have to tell your followers that they need to speak more loudly !” So now you know.)

Using Volume for Effect

In addition to using your volume to create more accurate word stress and to ensure native speakers can actually hear you, you can also use volume for effect.

First of all, volume can be used in combination with intonation in order to make certain syllables or certain words more clear.

Using louder volume helps you bring extra attention to your emotions and attitude and emphasizes which words are most important.

Varying your volume can also create more interest when you’re speaking.

Think about when you listen to actors on television shows and movies. How do they use different levels of volume?

Sometimes you speak more quietly because what you’re saying is a little bit secret .

Other times, you speak with so much emotion and energy because you’re angry or you’re excited or there’s some other attitude that you want to express through your volume.

Even if you’re not acting, but you’re giving a presentation or leading a meeting, you can signal which words are most important with your volume. You can direct your listener’s ear to the points which most require their attention and which you’re most concerned that they hear!

In the video, I play with volume a little bit to show you that changing up your volume beyond using word and sentence stress correctly can help native English speakers pay more attention to what you’re saying.

(I also talk more about the importance of volume in Seven Ways to Use Your Voice and Breath to Sound More Professional in English .)

You Need to Increase Your Volume

Remember, if you speak with a meek, little, small voice , nobody can hear what you’re saying and we’re not going to listen to you.

It’s not personal, it’s not your accent, it’s not that you’re a foreigner, it’s very simply that we can’t hear you!

I really want you to consider your volume from now on.

Think about how you can speak more clearly, more loudly, with more volume and with more control of how you sound when you’re speaking.

I hope this helps you understand why Americans tend to be so loud when speaking – and why you need to speak up too.

You *can* control your own volume in order to speak English a little bit more clearly and ensure that you’re understood by native English speakers.

Now it’s your turn! Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you didn’t speak loudly enough?

Has anyone ever asked you to speak up? Have you attempted to increase your volume already? How do you feel when you do so?

Leave a comment below and share your experiences with volume when speaking English.

Pitch vs. Volume

What's the difference.

Pitch and volume are two distinct characteristics of sound. Pitch refers to the perceived frequency of a sound wave, determining whether it is high or low. It is measured in hertz (Hz) and is influenced by the speed of vibrations. On the other hand, volume, also known as loudness, refers to the intensity or amplitude of a sound wave. It is measured in decibels (dB) and is determined by the amount of energy the sound wave carries. While pitch determines the musical notes and melodies, volume determines the level of sound intensity or softness.

Further Detail

Introduction.

Pitch and volume are two fundamental attributes of sound that play a crucial role in our perception and understanding of the auditory world. While pitch refers to the perceived frequency of a sound wave, volume, also known as loudness, relates to the intensity or amplitude of the sound. Both pitch and volume contribute to our overall experience of sound, but they differ in several key aspects. In this article, we will explore and compare the attributes of pitch and volume, shedding light on their unique characteristics and how they shape our auditory experiences.

Pitch is a perceptual attribute of sound that allows us to differentiate between high and low frequencies. It is closely related to the physical property of frequency, which measures the number of oscillations or cycles of a sound wave per second. The pitch of a sound is determined by the frequency of the sound wave, with higher frequencies corresponding to higher pitches and lower frequencies corresponding to lower pitches.

Our ability to perceive pitch is essential for recognizing and distinguishing between different musical notes, as well as for understanding speech and other auditory stimuli. Pitch is often described in terms of musical intervals, such as octaves, which represent a doubling or halving of the frequency. For example, the pitch of a note one octave higher than another note will have twice the frequency of the lower note.

Furthermore, pitch perception is not solely dependent on the physical properties of sound waves. It is also influenced by various psychological factors, including individual differences in auditory sensitivity and cultural influences. For instance, different musical traditions may have different pitch systems, resulting in variations in the perceived pitch of the same sound.

In summary, pitch is a perceptual attribute of sound that corresponds to the frequency of a sound wave. It allows us to differentiate between high and low frequencies, is crucial for recognizing musical notes, and can be influenced by both physical and psychological factors.

Volume, or loudness, refers to the perceived intensity or amplitude of a sound wave. It is a measure of the energy carried by the sound wave and determines how soft or loud a sound appears to be. Volume is closely related to the physical property of amplitude, which measures the maximum displacement of particles in a medium caused by the sound wave.

Our perception of volume is essential for understanding the distance, size, and intensity of sounds in our environment. It allows us to differentiate between a whisper and a shout, or a distant sound and a nearby one. Volume is typically measured in decibels (dB), with 0 dB representing the threshold of human hearing and higher values indicating louder sounds.

Similar to pitch, volume perception is not solely determined by the physical properties of sound waves. It is also influenced by various psychological factors, including individual differences in auditory sensitivity and attention. Additionally, our perception of volume can be influenced by contextual factors, such as the presence of background noise or the expectation of a certain sound level.

In summary, volume is a perceptual attribute of sound that corresponds to the intensity or amplitude of a sound wave. It allows us to differentiate between soft and loud sounds, is crucial for understanding the distance and intensity of sounds, and can be influenced by both physical and psychological factors.

While pitch and volume are distinct attributes of sound, they share some similarities and differences. Let's explore how they compare:

1. Perception

Pitch and volume are both perceptual attributes of sound that contribute to our overall auditory experience. They allow us to differentiate between different sounds and understand their characteristics. However, pitch primarily relates to the frequency of a sound wave, while volume primarily relates to the intensity or amplitude of a sound wave.

2. Physical Properties

Pitch is directly related to the physical property of frequency, which measures the number of oscillations or cycles of a sound wave per second. On the other hand, volume is directly related to the physical property of amplitude, which measures the maximum displacement of particles in a medium caused by the sound wave.

3. Measurement

Pitch is typically measured in hertz (Hz), with higher values indicating higher frequencies and higher pitches. Volume, on the other hand, is typically measured in decibels (dB), with higher values indicating louder sounds. While pitch can be measured objectively using frequency analyzers, volume is a subjective perception that varies between individuals.

4. Musical Applications

Pitch plays a crucial role in music, allowing us to recognize and differentiate between different musical notes. It forms the basis for melody, harmony, and musical scales. Volume, on the other hand, contributes to the dynamics of music, allowing for variations in loudness and creating emotional impact. Both pitch and volume are essential for musical expression and communication.

5. Psychological Factors

Both pitch and volume perception are influenced by various psychological factors. Individual differences in auditory sensitivity can affect how we perceive pitch and volume. Additionally, cultural and environmental factors can shape our perception of pitch and volume, leading to variations in musical traditions and sound preferences across different societies.

6. Communication and Speech

Pitch and volume are crucial for effective communication and speech understanding. Pitch variations in speech, known as intonation, convey important information such as emphasis, emotion, and sentence structure. Volume variations help us distinguish between different speakers, understand distance and proximity, and filter out background noise.

7. Perception of Distance and Size

Both pitch and volume contribute to our perception of distance and size in the auditory world. Higher-pitched sounds are often perceived as coming from smaller objects or being farther away, while lower-pitched sounds are associated with larger objects or closer proximity. Similarly, louder sounds are typically perceived as being closer or larger, while softer sounds are associated with distance or smaller objects.

8. Contextual Influences

Both pitch and volume perception can be influenced by contextual factors. The presence of background noise can affect our perception of both pitch and volume, making it more challenging to distinguish between different sounds. Additionally, our expectations and prior experiences can shape how we perceive pitch and volume in specific situations.

Pitch and volume are two essential attributes of sound that contribute to our perception and understanding of the auditory world. While pitch relates to the frequency of a sound wave and allows us to differentiate between high and low pitches, volume corresponds to the intensity or amplitude of a sound wave and determines how soft or loud a sound appears to be. Both pitch and volume are influenced by physical and psychological factors, and they play crucial roles in music, communication, and our overall auditory experiences. Understanding the unique characteristics of pitch and volume enhances our appreciation and comprehension of the rich and diverse world of sound.

Comparisons may contain inaccurate information about people, places, or facts. Please report any issues.

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10.3: Vocal Delivery

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Learning Objectives

Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech more engaging.
Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech clearer.
Discuss the relationship between vocal delivery and speaker credibility.

Speaking for Engagement

A person speaking at a podium with a microphone.

Vocal Variety

Speaking for Clarity

Articulation

Pronunciation

Common Causes of Fluency Hiccups

Lack of preparation. Effective practice sessions are the best way to prevent fluency hiccups.
Not writing for speaking. If you write your speech the way you’ve been taught to write papers, you will have fluency hiccups. You must translate the written words into something easier for you to present orally. To do this, read your speech aloud and edit as you write to make sure your speech is easy for you to speak.
A poorly prepared speaking outline. Whether it is on paper or note cards, sloppy writing, unorganized bullet points, or incomplete/insufficient information on a speaking outline leads to fluency hiccups.
Distractions. Audience members and the external environment are unpredictable. Hopefully audience members will be polite and will silence their phones, avoid talking while the speaker is presenting, and avoid moving excessively. There could also be external noise that comes through a door or window. A speaker can also be distracted by internal noise such as thinking about other things.

“Getting Plugged In”: Delivering Presentations Online

Have you ever presented online or been an audience member for an online presentation? If so, describe your experience and compare it to face-to-face speaking.
What are some of the key differences between presenting online and presenting in person that a speaker should consider?
How might online presentations play into your future career goals? What types of presentations do you think you would give? What could you do to ensure the presentations are effective?

Key Takeaways

Speakers should use vocal variety, which is changes in rate, volume, and pitch, to make a speech more engaging.
Speakers should use proper articulation and pronunciation to make their message clear.
Interruptions to the fluency of a speech, including fluency hiccups and verbal fillers, detract from the speaker’s message and can lessen a speaker’s credibility.
Record yourself practicing your speech. How does your speech sound in terms of vocal variety? Cite specific examples.
Listen to your recorded speech again. How would you evaluate your articulation and pronunciation? Cite specific examples.
Over the course of a day, take note of verbal fillers that you tend to use. List them here so you can be a higher self-monitor and begin to notice and lessen your use of them.

Courville, R., “Delivery,” TheVirtualPresenter.com, accessed November 5, 2012, http://thevirtualpresenter.com/category/delivery .

Understanding Tone of Voice in Communication: Definition and Examples

Have you ever considered the power of your tone of voice? How we communicate, verbally and non-verbally, significantly impacts our personal and professional relationships. In today’s fast-paced world, mastering the art of effective communication is essential.

This blog post will offer a fresh perspective on understanding the “tone of voice in communication definition,” delve into the various types of tone and provide practical tips for mastering tone in various contexts.

By the end of this post, you’ll be equipped with valuable insights to enhance your communication skills and leave a lasting impression on your listeners.

Key Takeaways

The tone of voice is an important factor in communication, consisting of pitch, volume, and speed.
It can be adapted to suit personal relationships and professional settings to foster trust or encourage listeners.
Body language, such as facial expressions and gestures, should also be considered for effective communication.

Defining Tone of Voice in Communication

The tone of voice, a crucial aspect of communication, is a potent tool in expressing sentiments, emotions, disposition, and objectives, including a positive tone. In spoken communication, the components of tone of voice include:

Word choice
Sentence structure
Level of formality
All other elements are discernible in a script or a print advertisement.

However, distinguishing between written tone and spoken word raises a question. The distinction between written and spoken tone of voice lies in their focus.

While written tone pertains to the attitude and emotional context conveyed through writing, spoken tone refers to how someone sounds when they speak, encompassing their personality and mood.

For example, Giancarlo Esposito’s voice in Sonos Voice Control exhibits a natural, consistent, and friendly style, showcasing a perfect blend of tone and speaking style.

Components of Tone of Voice

The elements that makeup tone of voice include pitch, volume, and speed, which are crucial in conveying the intended message and avoiding miscommunication.

For instance, a high-pitched voice may suggest immaturity and childishness, while a low pitch can convey authority or seriousness. The volume of speech can be employed to stress certain words or phrases, thereby aiding in the expression of emotion.

Regulating the pace of speech holds equal significance in shaping the tone of voice. Consciously moderating the speed can aid in achieving a more informative tone and help control emotional tones in communication.

Slow speech can impart a commanding presence yet may also demonstrate a lack of interest and lead to disengagement. On the other hand, fast speech can suggest nervousness or enthusiasm, significantly impacting the tone of voice and how a person is perceived.

Written vs. Spoken Tone of Voice

In contrasting written and speaking tones, one should consider the differences in their execution.

While written tone requires careful word choice, punctuation, and sentence structure to convey the intended message and emotion, spoken tone relies on the speaker’s ability to adjust their tone of voice, pitch, volume, and speed to achieve the desired effect.

In certain situations, an informal tone of voice may be more appropriate. This tone is more casual, and includes slang expressions, and shorter words, helping to convey emotions and individual opinions.

However, if not used appropriately, an informal tone can create confusion in communication. Therefore, understanding the nuances of both written and spoken tones of voice is crucial for successful communication.

The Importance of Tone of Voice in Communication

The significance of tone of voice in communication is undeniable. It contributes to a more congenial work environment, fosters understanding and respect for colleagues, and results in more effective communication and collaboration.

The way a person speaks can significantly influence how their message is interpreted and perceived while also expressing feelings, emotions, attitudes, and intentions. This makes the choice of voice important in various situations, including personal relationships and professional settings.

Any business fundamentally requires an effective tone of voice that employs voice computing to interact with customers. It provides listeners with an indication of who the speaker is and conveys brand personality.

For example, utilizing Giancarlo Esposito’s voice in Sonos Voice Control lets users recognize the brand immediately. Furthermore, adopting a clear and concise communication style helps ensure the intended message is conveyed accurately and prevents potential misinterpretations.

The tone of Voice in Personal Relationships

The tone of voice is significant in personal relationships, fostering trust, demonstrating understanding, and establishing a bond.

Employing a tone that the other individual perceives as being pleasant and agreeable can aid us in establishing trust and creating a favorable relationship.

Moreover, utilizing a tone of voice that expresses understanding and sympathy can assist us in demonstrating empathy and forming a firmer connection with the other individual.

By adopting a welcoming and open tone of voice, we can establish a connection with the other individual. This is especially important during difficult conversations or when trying to resolve conflicts, as a soft and empathetic tone can help to defuse tension and promote understanding.

The tone of Voice in Professional Settings

The tone of voice holds similar importance in professional settings, as it can impact communication by conveying different meanings and subtleties. In addition, mastering the appropriate tone of voice can help leaders:

Demonstrate assurance
Augment respect

Incorrect tone of voice can detrimentally affect relationships with other team members, making it essential to maintain the right tone in professional communication and avoid using the wrong tone.

You can adapt your tone of voice according to different situations in professional settings. For example:

Adopting a positive and courteous tone is advisable when conversing with one’s superior.
When delivering knowledge or data, a formal and informative tone of voice should be employed.
Adopting a more humorous tone and expressing one’s personality can be suitable in informal settings with clients or colleagues with a good rapport.

Common Types of Tone of Voice

Numerous types of tone of voice exist that can be employed in different situations, such as:

motivational
informational

Understanding these different tones and their appropriate use can significantly enhance communication in personal and professional contexts.

By understanding the varied tones and adjusting them suitably, one can convey their message more effectively and leave a lasting impression on their audience.

Each tone of voice has its unique characteristics and can be used to achieve specific outcomes. For example, a motivational tone can inspire and encourage, whereas a respectful tone can demonstrate politeness and consideration. Let’s explore some common types of tone of voice and their applications.

Motivating Tone of Voice

A motivating tone of voice inspires and encourages individuals to draw upon their capabilities and strive for success.

This tone effectively maintains engagement and motivation in both personal and professional contexts. By employing a motivating tone, leaders can inspire their teams to reach their full potential and achieve their goals.

Utilizing positive language, speaking enthusiastically, and employing a confident and authoritative tone are examples of a motivating tone of voice. This tone can be especially effective when one needs to instill confidence, boost morale, or persuade others to take action.

Informative Tone of Voice

An informative tone of voice imparts knowledge, conveys facts, and encourages personal development. It provides clear and concise explanations and instructions, typically in educational or instructional content, to impart valuable information to the audience.

In professional settings, an informative tone of voice can showcase authority and expertise, making it an essential tool for leaders and educators alike.

To achieve an informative tone, one must focus on clarity and conciseness in their speech, avoiding industry jargon or technical language that is difficult to comprehend. By employing a clear and informative tone, the speaker can ensure that their message is effectively communicated and understood by their audience.

Soft Tone of Voice

A soft tone of voice is employed for intimate dialogues, conveying sympathy and kindness during difficult dialogues. In personal relationships, a soft tone of voice can foster an atmosphere of intimacy and understanding, allowing the other person to feel secure and encouraging them to pay close attention.

Employing softer words and speaking at a lower volume can assist in conveying a soft tone of voice. A soft tone of voice can be crucial in building trust and maintaining harmony in situations requiring empathy and understanding, such as comforting a friend or resolving a conflict.

Humorous Tone of Voice

A humorous tone of voice is utilized to maintain the audience’s cheerful disposition with amusing anecdotes or quotations.

This tone can enliven the atmosphere and captivate the audience, making it an excellent tool for engaging listeners and fostering a positive mood. However, it is essential to employ a humorous tone of voice appropriately so as not to cause offense or miscommunication.

Examples of humorous tone of voice include making jokes, utilizing puns, and narrating funny stories. By adding humor to a conversation or presentation, speakers can create a more enjoyable and memorable experience for their audience.

Respectful Tone of Voice

Kindness, humility, and truthfulness characterize a respectful tone of voice. It is particularly important in professional settings, where demonstrating respect for the rights, opinions, and feelings of the listener or audience is essential. Utilizing a respectful tone of voice can enhance communication by fostering a sense of trust and rapport between the speaker and the listener.

Examples of respectful tone of voice include speaking tranquility and courteously, utilizing appropriate language, and abstaining from sarcasm or censure. Speakers can create a positive impression and build strong connections with their audience by adopting a respectful tone.

Tips for Mastering Tone of Voice in Communication

Mastering tone of voice in communication requires focusing on three key elements: matching tone to message, adapting tone for different audiences, and practicing active listening.

Developing proficiency in these areas can significantly improve the effectiveness of one’s communication in both personal and professional settings.

Subsequent sections will detail these elements and provide practical tips for improving your tone of voice in communication.

Matching Tone to Message

Ensuring a match between tone and message means the inflection of the communication is in accordance with the desired meaning and context of the communication. This is crucial to guarantee that the message is communicated precisely and proficiently.

For example, a solemn tone of voice should be employed when conveying a solemn message, while a jocular tone of voice should be employed when communicating a jocular message.

By aligning tone with the conveyed message, speakers can ensure that their communication is clear, accurate, and effective. This skill is particularly important in professional settings, where misunderstandings can have significant consequences.

Adapting Tone for Different Audiences

It’s imperative to adapt your tone for diverse audiences, as it enables the successful communication of ideas, taking into account cultural background, age, and professional status.

When altering one’s tone for different audiences, it is imperative to factor in cultural background, age, and professional standing and assess the context of the discourse and the relationship between the speaker and the audience.

Examples of tone adjustment for varied audiences include:

Adopting a more casual and amicable tone for a younger audience
Employing a more formal and deferential tone for an older audience
Utilizing a more authoritative and educational tone for a professional audience

Speakers can ensure their message is well-received and understood by adapting tone to suit different audiences.

Practicing Active Listening

Active listening practice includes attentively observing the speaker’s voice and responding appropriately.

This skill is essential for fostering better communication and strengthening relationships, as it demonstrates respect and empathy towards the speaker, increases comprehension, and lessens misapprehensions.

Additionally, active listening allows for improved problem-solving and decision-making, as it allows one to acquire accurate information and perspectives.

To practice active listening, one can:

Refrain from interrupting
Inquire with clarifying questions
Reiterate what the speaker has said
Provide feedback

By honing active listening skills, individuals can become more effective communicators and enhance their personal and professional relationships.

The Connection Between Body Language and Tone of Voice

Facial expressions and gestures, components of body language, can significantly correlate with tone of voice.

These nonverbal cues can express emotions such as tension or anger and signify confidence or distrust, thereby influencing the tone of voice and the overall impression of the speaker.

Grasping the link between body language and tone of voice can help individuals to communicate more effectively and avoid misunderstandings. The forthcoming sections will delve into the function of facial expressions and gestures in conveying meaning and emotion in communication.

Facial Expressions

Facial expressions hold supreme importance when discussing tone of voice, as they reinforce the intended message and illustrate emotions and attitudes.

Facial expressions can reinforce the tone of voice by exhibiting the same emotions and attitudes as the tone of voice, such as a smile indicating happiness or a scowl indicating anger. Conversely, facial expressions can also contradict the tone of voice, generating confusion and transmitting mixed messages.

By being aware of the facial expressions that accompany their tone of voice, speakers can ensure that their communication is consistent and effectively conveys their intended message. This can lead to more successful communication and stronger connections with their audience.

Gestures and Posture

With regard to tone of voice, gestures and posture carry substantial weight, as they are nonverbal behaviors that can effectively convey messages and reinforce or emphasize the verbal content of speech.

Utilizing appropriate gestures and maintaining an open posture can contribute to the overall impression of the speaker, making their communication more engaging and persuasive.

By being mindful of the gestures and posture accompanying their tone of voice, speakers can enhance their overall communication and leave a lasting impression on their audience. This can lead to more effective communication and stronger connections in both personal and professional settings.

In conclusion, understanding and mastering tone of voice in communication is essential for success in both personal and professional relationships.

By exploring the different types of tone, learning to match tone to message, adapting tone for various audiences, and practicing active listening, individuals can enhance their communication skills and leave a lasting impression on their listeners.

Remember, the power of your tone of voice can significantly impact the way your message is received and perceived. So, make every word count, and let your tone of voice be the key to unlocking effective communication.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does tone of voice affect communication.

The tone of voice is essential in communication as it changes the meaning of words and affects how people perceive and interact with you.

It can influence their willingness to listen and create confusion or misinterpretation if your tone isn’t aligned with your words.

Good copywriting should be easy to read. Splitting your text into paragraphs is a key to better readability. Start a new paragraph whenever you introduce a new idea or change the direction of your argument. This will

What are the 4 essential types of tone of voice in communication?

Motivator, Educator, Coach, and Colleague are the four essential types of tone of voice in communication.

What is a positive tone of voice?

A positive tone of voice is friendly , professional, and sincere while using words and tones that are appropriate, respectful, and supportive. It should be genuine and cheerful, not mocking or sarcastic, to keep the audience engaged and to encourage people to buy into your ideas.

What is the tone of voice in face-to-face communication?

When communicating face to face, tone of voice is essential to consider as it conveys the character of your business through your words.

It is not only about what is said, but also how it is said and the impression it leaves on those who read or hear you.

What does tone of voice mean?

The tone of voice is how you communicate your brand’s character in words, spoken or written, and the impression it leaves on your audience. According to Merriam-Webster, it refers to how someone speaks to someone else. It can be confused with written tone when used to describe a brand’s writing.

All You Need to Know about Voice Modulation & Tonality for Public Speaking

Hrideep barot.

Body Language & Delivery , Public Speaking

Working on improving voice modulation and tonality

What is Voice Modulation in Public Speaking?

Voice Modulation is when you control or adjust your voice. It’s when you choose to go louder or softer, faster or slower, dramatic or emotional. Basically, voice modulation means using your voice and tone to communicate your message more effectively.

Without voice modulation, you would speak in a continuous, monotonous pitch or tone. We use voice modulation in our daily conversation as well, but the problem is that when we get up in front of an audience, stage fright dries up our throat and makes it hard for us to effectively use our tone and pitch.

You might have noticed this. Our voice strains, we struggle to speak up, we may fumble over words. But with a little bit of practice, you can make voice modulation and tonality your strongest tools when it comes to communication.

Why Tonality is Important?

When I started out speaking in public, I used to wonder why I wasn’t being effective enough. People were zoning out during my speech.

I knew my content well, I had spent a good amount of time researching and writing it, and my language was pretty much on point as well.

It wasn’t until I attended this workshop where the speaker was just killing it on stage! The audience was just waiting for him to say the next sentence. The way he spoke – his pauses, his emphasis on certain words, the way he would modulate his voice and the way his tone reflected the mood of his story.

It was then when I realized how important speech tonality can be.

The thing is, when we start out speaking on stage, we tend to talk in one tonal range. We feel comfortable speaking like that and so we stick to it.

But when we do that, we sound monotonous and the audience automatically tunes out. The audience thinks they know what you’re going to say next and so, they stop listening.

Note: Want to take your communications skills to the next level? Book a complimentary consultation with one of our expert communication coaches. We’ll look under the hood of your hurdles and pick two to three growth opportunities so you can speak with impact!

Alright…here are some things to keep in mind to grip your audience with your voice and tone using voice modulation and tonal variations:

This is the most basic and quickest way to add some range in your speech. Go through your speech and see which words are key to communicating your message. Pick these words and give them weight in your speech through your voice. Here’s an example:

“Let me talk to you about a word that is overused, never quite understood and most importantly, underrated. The word Millennials.”

Read this as you would read anything. Now, let’s add some emphasis to it:

“Let me talk to you about a word that is overused , never quite understood and most importantly, underrated . The word Millennials .”

Adding a bit of emphasis on these words will help the audience understand more easily which words you want them to focus on. It’s one of my go-to techniques when it comes to voice modulation and tonality.

When we go on stage, the adrenaline is rushing through our veins. We could be excited or shaking with nervousness. And that’s normal. A stage tends to do that to all of us!

The problem is we tend to rush through our speech because of this. Being conscious about your speech and providing a few pauses can greatly improve the impact of a speech.

Here’s the same example with the emphasized words along with a few pauses:

“Let me talk to you about a word that is overused , never quite understood and most importantly (…pause…) underrated . The word (…pause…) Millennials .”

Silence is often overlooked when it comes to public speaking. But it can be one of your most powerful tools.

Starting your speech with a moment of silence, or a long pause after you say something very hard-hitting can go a long way in creating the impact you desire among your audience. As speakers, we want to do just that – speak.

But when we take a moment to let our statements just hang there, it can have an outstanding impact!

For instance, when you say something like, “The pressure got to her so much that one day she ended her own life.” After saying such a statement, hold on before saying your next sentence and just let the silence hang in there, let the message sink in with the audience. Such statements deserve a little more time, so we should give them that.

Silence. It’s underused. But when used correctly, it can be amazingly powerful.

Related article: 7 Reasons Why Pausing Makes a Great Speech

Loud & Soft (Vocal Variation)

increase or decrease your volume for better vocal variation while speaking

The volume of your speech plays a key role in the clarity of your speech and is an easy way to modulate your vocal tones. We need to be loud so that everyone can hear the words being spoken, but at the same time, we must draw the line between being loud and shouting!

Being loud and clear is not very difficult. With a little bit of practice, it’s easy to be speaking in a way that ensures everybody can hear you.

The not-so-easy part of speaking is to modulate your voice between loud and soft. Speakers go loud when they want people to listen.

But when they want people to really listen, they go soft. Changing your volume to match your content plays a key role in communicating your message more effectively.

Fast & Slow for Better Voice Modulation (Pace)

I’ve always struggled with pace. I’ve been told countless times to slow down when I’m on stage. When I’ve listened, I’ve performed well. When I ignore that advice, I usually fumble and mess up. Going slow helps us be calmer and deliver with more clarity.

But again, just like it is with volume, speaking slowly is not as important as modulating your pace. Going fast at some points and slowing down at others is a sure-shot of way keeping your audience engaged with your speech.

Express Emotion Through Tonality (Inflection)

Voice is a powerful tool to express emotions. Try and reflect your voice with your emotion for greater impact. When you talk about happiness, success and positivity, reflect these words in the way you to speak.

When you talk about a sad situation, sounding gloomy and upset can help communicate your point even better.

Inflection is an often overlooked topic when it comes to voice modulation and tonality in public speaking. But it is HIGHLY important.

If you speak at a level inflection , you’ll sound dull and monotonous (like a boring history teacher).

If you want to speak in a manner that provokes a response from your audience or listener, use upward inflection – end your sentence on a higher note.

If you want to state a fact or make a statement that showcases confidence and certainty, end your sentence on a lower note ( downward inflection ).

The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort , talks about the power of voice modulation in great length in the context of closing a sale. A must watch for anyone who wants to get a deeper understanding of the importance of voice modulation and tonality.

jordan belfort talking about the importance of tonality for sales and communication

Using these variations will help convey your message with a lot more emotion and impact instead of just saying it as it is.

Tips to Improve Tonality

Here are some easy and quick things you can keep in mind to help elevate your speech modulation game:

While you should drink plenty of water in general, having a few sips right before you go on stage can help you speak more clearly and make it easier for your voice to modulate.

Being hydrated also makes it easier for you to modulate your voice as lack of water can make your vocal folds and larynx dry.

Avoid Slurring

Slurring is when you start off a sentence strongly, but your voice fades off towards the end of the sentence. This happens to me a lot! The audience can hear the first few words, but struggle to hear the ending of the sentence.

To avoid this, practicing a little louder than normal and being conscious of your slurring can help reduce your use of it.

We’ve made an extensive video on how you can practice for a speech to not just help with voice modulation but overall delivery. Hopefully, the techniques given here will help ease out the practice sessions and lead to more a confident delivery:

Practice with Music Speakers

When I practice, I blast rock songs through my speakers and practice over that sound. This helps me to avoid slurring and ensures that I’m loud enough.

Audio Recording

Audio recording yourself is a great way to understand where you’re going right or wrong with your tonality. Audio record the first draft your speech.

When you listen to it, make notes of where you can be louder/softer, where you can go faster/slower, which words to emphasize on, where can you add some pauses for greater impact etc.

Related article: The Incredible Impact of Video Recording Yourself While Practicing a Speech

Voice Modulation Exercises (Used by Singers and Voice Actors)

Here are some voice modulation exercises to help improve your tonality and pitch variation:

Sentence Emphasis

To understand the importance of tonality and to practice it no matter where you are, take a sentence (any sentence) and emphasis each different word within that sentence.

For example, let’s say the sentence is “I told you he murdered the gardener.”

Now, repeat the sentence in your mind and each time you say it, choose a different word to emphasis on.

I told you he murdered the gardener.
I told you he murdered the gardener .

You might have noticed how with each different emphasis, the meaning of the entire sentence can change (if ever so slightly).

And that’s the point of voice modulation and tonality in public speaking – using your voice effectively to convey a message with maximum impact!

Humming helps to warm up your voice and to cool it down after a long performance. Starting with low pitches and moving to higher notes is a good way to test out your range without straining your voice.

Take a full breath and let the breath out as if you were blowing bubbles. Let your lips vibrate as the air moves past them. This will help coordinate your vocal folds & breath for better voice control. It will help to bring your vocal cords closer to give you a clearer sound.

A More Effective Voice (Beyond the Stage)

Mastering voice modulation is one of the keys to becoming a great public speaker.

However, learning to use your voice effectively can help in a lot more ways than just in public speaking.

Knowing when to emphasise on words, changing your pitch and pace to suit the listener, using pauses, are all things that can be used in your day-to-day life to become a better communicator overall, even beyond the stage.

Try using these tips the next time you are trying to put a point across to someone. See how much more persuasive and effective you can be using the power of voice modulation!

If you’re serious about not just improving your tonality but to improve your public speaking at an overall level, I would highly recommend you to check out this course: Acumen Presents: Chris Anderson on Public Speaking on Udemy. The 5 tools of public speaking – connection, narration, explanation, persuasion and revelation – taught here are immensely helpful and go beyond the technical aspects of voice modulation. .

Being the founder of TED Talks, Chris Anderson provides numerous examples of the best TED speakers to give us a very practical way of overcoming stage fear and delivering a speech that people will remember. His course has helped me personally and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to learn public speaking.

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Meaning of speech in English

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speech noun ( SAY WORDS )

She suffers from a speech defect .
From her slow , deliberate speech I guessed she must be drunk .
Freedom of speech and freedom of thought were both denied under the dictatorship .
As a child , she had some speech problems .
We use these aids to develop speech in small children .
a problem shared is a problem halved idiom
banteringly
bull session
chew the fat idiom
conversation
conversational
put the world to rights idiom
take/lead someone on/to one side idiom
tête-à-tête

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

speech noun ( FORMAL TALK )

talk She will give a talk on keeping kids safe on the internet.
lecture The lecture is entitled "War and the Modern American Presidency".
presentation We were given a presentation of progress made to date.
speech You might have to make a speech when you accept the award.
address He took the oath of office then delivered his inaugural address.
oration It was to become one of the most famous orations in American history.
Her speech was received with cheers and a standing ovation .
She closed the meeting with a short speech.
The vicar's forgetting his lines in the middle of the speech provided some good comedy .
Her speech caused outrage among the gay community .
She concluded the speech by reminding us of our responsibility .
call for papers
extemporize
maiden speech
presentation
talk at someone

speech | American Dictionary

Speech noun ( talking ), examples of speech, collocations with speech.

These are words often used in combination with speech .

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

Translations of speech

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Word of the Day

veterinary surgeon

formal for vet

Dead ringers and peas in pods (Talking about similarities, Part 2)

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Speech Volume

Reference work entry
First Online: 01 January 2021
pp 7856–7858
Cite this reference work entry

C R Hodges-Simeon 3 &
K M Steinhilber 3

11 Accesses

Speech amplitude ; Speech intensity ; Speech loudness ; Vocal amplitude ; Vocal intensity ; Vocal loudness

The psychoacoustic terms “loudness” or “volume” are primarily influenced by the amplitude vibration (or intensity) of a sound wave. Measured in decibels, these terms assess power per unit of area in a vocalization.

Introduction

Human speech is a complex, multidimensional signal used by listeners to make a variety of fitness-relevant decisions. Evolutionary signaling theory predicts that listeners have been selected to attend to those acoustic signals that reveal (on average) honest or accurate information about the signaler (Searcy and Nowicki 2005 ). Evolutionary psychologists have primarily focused on a single component of speech – fundamental frequency (i.e., the primary determinant of perceived pitch) – and its information value in intrasexual competitive contexts. For instance, a number of studies have shown that lower fundamental frequency increases...

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C R Hodges-Simeon & K M Steinhilber

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Correspondence to C R Hodges-Simeon or K M Steinhilber .

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Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

Todd K Shackelford

Viviana A Weekes-Shackelford

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Hodges-Simeon, C.R., Steinhilber, K.M. (2021). Speech Volume. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_1413

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Book Reviews

This collection may be the closest we'll ever come to a dickinson autobiography.

Maureen Corrigan

A new collection of Emily Dickinson's letters has been published by Harvard's Belknap Press, edited by Dickinson scholars Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. Three Lions/Getty Images hide caption

A new collection of Emily Dickinson's letters has been published by Harvard's Belknap Press, edited by Dickinson scholars Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell.

Among the Great Moments in Literary History I wish I could've witnessed is that day, sometime after May 15, 1886, when Lavinia Dickinson entered the bedroom of her newly deceased older sister and began opening drawers.

Out sprang poems, almost 1,800 of them. Given that Emily Dickinson had only published a handful of poems during her lifetime, this discovery was a shock.

" 'Hope' is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul," begins one of those now-famous poems. Whatever Dickinson hoped for her poems, she could never have envisioned how they'd resonate with readers; nor how curious those readers would be about her life, much of it spent within her father's house in Amherst, Mass., and, in later years, within that bedroom.

Every so often, the reading public's image of Emily Dickinson shifts: For much of the 20th century, she was a fey Stevie Nicks-type figure — check out, for instance, the 1976 film of Julie Harris' lauded one-woman show, The Belle of Amherst .

A feminist Emily Dickinson emerged during the Second Women's Movement, when poems like "I'm 'wife' " were celebrated for their avant garde anger. And, jumping to the present, a new monumental volume of Dickinson's letters — the first in more than 60 years — gives us an engaged Emily Dickinson; a woman in conversation with the world, through gossip, as well as remarks about books, politics and the signal events of her age, particularly the Civil War.

The Letters of Emily Dickinson, by Emily Dickinson, edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell Harvard's Belknap Press hide caption

The Letters of Emily Dickinson, by Emily Dickinson, edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell

This new collection of The Letters of Emily Dickinson is published by Harvard's Belknap Press and edited by two Dickinson scholars, Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. To accurately date some of Dickinson's letters, they've studied weather reports and seasonal blooming and harvest cycles in 19th century Amherst. They've also added some 300 previously uncollected letters to this volume for a grand total of 1,304 letters.

The result is that The Letters of Emily Dickinson reads like the closest thing we'll probably ever have to an intimate autobiography of the poet. The first letter here is written by an 11-year-old Dickinson to her brother Austin, away at school. It's a breathless, kid-sister-marvel of run-on sentences about yellow hens and a "skonk" and poor "Cousin Zebina [who] had a fit the other day and bit his tongue ..."

The final letter, by an ailing 55-year-old Dickinson — most likely the last she wrote before falling unconscious on May 13, 1886 — was to her cousins Louisa and Frances Norcross. It reads:

Never Mind The White Dress, Turns Out Emily Dickinson Had A Green Thumb

Little Cousins, "Called back." Emily.

In between is a life filled with visitors, chores and recipes for doughnuts and coconut cakes. There's mention of the racist minstrel stereotype Jim Crow, as well as of public figures like Florence Nightingale and Walt Whitman. There are also allusions to the death toll of the ongoing Civil War.

Dickinson's loyal dog Carlo walks with her, and frogs and even flies keep her company. Indeed, in an 1859 letter about one such winged companion, Belle of Amherst charm alternates with cold-blooded callousness. Dickinson writes to her cousin Louisa:

Movie Interviews

Film celebrates emily dickinson's poetry and 'quiet passion'.

I enjoy much with a fly, during sister's absence, not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature, that hops from pane to pane of her white house, so very cheerfully, and hums and thrums, a sort of speck piano. ... I'll kill him the day [Lavinia] comes [home], for I shan't need him any more ..."

Dickinson's singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems: cryptic, comic and charged with Awe. A simple thank-you note to her soul mate and beloved sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, reads:

Pop Culture Happy Hour

You don't know 'dickinson'.

Dear Sue, The Supper was delicate and strange. I ate it with compunction as I would eat a Vision.

There are 1,304 letters, and, still, they're not enough. Scholars estimate that we only have about one-tenth of the letters Dickinson ever wrote. And, on that momentous day in 1886, Lavinia entered her sister's bedroom to find and successfully burn all the letters Dickinson herself had received from others during her lifetime. Such was the custom of the day. Which makes this new volume of Dickinson's letters feel like both an intrusion and an outwitting of the silence of death — something I want to believe Dickinson would have relished.

Emily Dickinson

IMAGES

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Parts of speech with examples and definition| List of all parts of

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Parts of speech with Definition and examples #Shorts #viral
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Parts of Speech। All parts of speech in English grammar। Parts of speech in Hindi grammar।live class

COMMENTS

Assessing Speech
Your electronic clinical medicine handbook. Guides to help pass your exams. Tools every medical student needs. Quick diagrams to have the answers, fast. Quizzes to test your knowledge. Listen to the patient speak on order to assess for a potential speech disorder. Listen to the rate of speech, volume, quantity, fluency and tonality.
Communication Center
Volume. Volume is one of the simpler concepts that can go a long way in making your presentation better. 1. Volume is how loud a speaker's voice is during a presentation. 2. Volume is one of the most vital elements of any speech. If your voice does not reach the audience, it becomes much harder for your content to resonate with the audience ...
Mental State Examination 2
Thought form deals with the 'mechanics' of the patient's thoughts i.e. how the patient is thinking. This is of diagnostic use as in many psychiatric disorders, thinking 'slips' to a less sophisticated level as a consequence of the illness. This results in disorders of thought form, where the ability to express ideas cogently and ...
Emphasis, Volume, and Pauses
Emphasis. One of the other things our voices do naturally is emphasize certain words in a sentence. This emphasis tells the listener what's important in the sentence and brings clarity of meaning. For example, in the old tongue twister "Sally sells seashells by the seashore," the speaker decides what is most important for the audience by ...
10.3 Vocal Delivery
Vocal delivery includes components of speech delivery that relate to your voice. These include rate, volume, pitch, articulation, pronunciation, and fluency. Our voice is important to consider when delivering our speech for two main reasons. First, vocal delivery can help us engage and interest the audience. Second, vocal delivery helps ensure ...
Volume and the Public Speaker: Be Heard and Be Effective
Strategy 1 - Minimize noise distractions. Any noise that isn't your voice will be a distraction to your audience. Loud noises will obviously create challenges, but even soft noises can be an irritation for your audience. Close doors or windows to shut out noisy vacuums, lawn mowers, traffic, or any other external noise.
5.3 Vocal Delivery
These include rate, volume, pitch, articulation, pronunciation, and fluency. Our voice is important to consider when delivering our speech for two main reasons. First, vocal delivery can help us engage and interest the audience. Second, vocal delivery helps ensure that our ideas are communicated clearly.
Volume Variation In Public Speaking
What is Vocalics and Why is It Important. Vocalics is the study of the non-lexical components of communication, focusing mainly on the elements relating to the voice of the speaker.. If you have a monotone, the message is not conveyed precisely, and creates a barrier between the audience and the speaker. When your speech has alternating tones and pitch, and the volume changes according to the ...
Speech Volume
Introduction. Human speech is a complex, multidimensional signal used by listeners to make a variety of fitness-relevant decisions. Evolutionary signaling theory predicts that listeners have been selected to attend to those acoustic signals that reveal (on average) honest or accurate information about the signaler (Searcy and Nowicki 2005 ).
12.3: Vocal Aspects of Delivery
Voice, or vocal sound, is made when controlled air being exhaled from the lungs, passes over the vocal cords causing a controlled vibration. The vibrating air resonates in the body, chest cavity, mouth, and nasal passages. The vibrating air causes a chain reaction with the air in the room. The room's air, set in motion by the voice, is ...
Volume Definition & Meaning
The meaning of VOLUME is the degree of loudness or the intensity of a sound; also : loudness. How to use volume in a sentence. Synonym Discussion of Volume.
18.7: Vocal Delivery
18.7: Vocal Delivery. Learning Objectives. Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech more engaging. Identify elements of vocal delivery that make a speech clearer. Discuss the relationship between vocal delivery and speaker credibility. Vocal delivery includes components of speech delivery that relate to your voice: rate, volume ...
How to Use Volume to Emphasize Key Points in Your Speech
Volume is a key component of vocal variety, which is the ability to change your voice to suit your purpose, audience, and context. Vocal variety can make your speech more interesting, engaging ...
14.3: Speech Delivery- Body Language and Voice
Speakers should use vocal variety, which is changes in rate, volume, and pitch, to make a speech more engaging. Speakers should use proper articulation and pronunciation to make their message clear. Interruptions to the fluency of a speech, including fluency hiccups and verbal fillers, detract from the speaker's message and can lessen a ...
Speak Up! Use Your Volume to Speak English More Effectively
Volume plays an important role in speaking English clearly and effectively communicating ideas. We use different levels of loudness to signal which words are important, what we want you to understand from our meaning, and which ideas most require your attention. Culturally, being loud is something that Americans are used to.
Pitch vs. Volume
Volume; Definition: The perceived frequency of a sound: The perceived loudness of a sound: Measurement: Measured in Hertz (Hz) Measured in decibels (dB) ... Communication and Speech. Pitch and volume are crucial for effective communication and speech understanding. Pitch variations in speech, known as intonation, convey important information ...
10.3: Vocal Delivery
Vocal delivery includes components of speech delivery that relate to your voice. These include rate, volume, pitch, articulation, pronunciation, and fluency. Our voice is important to consider when delivering our speech for two main reasons. First, vocal delivery can help us engage and interest the audience. Second, vocal delivery helps ensure ...
Understanding Tone of Voice in Communication: Definition and Examples
For instance, a high-pitched voice may suggest immaturity and childishness, while a low pitch can convey authority or seriousness. The volume of speech can be employed to stress certain words or phrases, thereby aiding in the expression of emotion. Regulating the pace of speech holds equal significance in shaping the tone of voice.
The Signs and Causes of Disorganized Speech
Contamination: fusing ideas into one another. Accelerated thinking: rapid flow and increased volume of speech. Flight of ideas: losing track of where a thought is going. Inhibited thinking: slow ...
All You Need to Know about Voice Modulation & Tonality
Voice Modulation is when you control or adjust your voice. It's when you choose to go louder or softer, faster or slower, dramatic or emotional. Basically, voice modulation means using your voice and tone to communicate your message more effectively. ... The volume of your speech plays a key role in the clarity of your speech and is an easy ...
SPEECH
SPEECH definition: 1. the ability to talk, the activity of talking, or a piece of spoken language: 2. the way a…. Learn more.
volume
definition 3: the amount of space enclosed within or occupied by a three-dimensional object. The volume of the car engine is about two hundred cubic inches. synonyms: bulk, capacity, content. similar words: dimensions, magnitude, mass, measure, measurements, size. definition 4: amount; quantity.
Speech Volume
Introduction. Human speech is a complex, multidimensional signal used by listeners to make a variety of fitness-relevant decisions. Evolutionary signaling theory predicts that listeners have been selected to attend to those acoustic signals that reveal (on average) honest or accurate information about the signaler (Searcy and Nowicki 2005 ).
Emily Dickinson's singular voice comes into focus in a new collection
Dickinson's singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems: cryptic, comic and charged with Awe. A simple thank-you note to her soul mate and beloved ...

Assessing Speech

Rate of Speech

Volume of Speech

Quantity of Speech

Examples of Dysfluency

Causes of Impaired Speech Fluency

Snapshot: Initialising...

Mental State Examination 2 – Speech and Thought

Acknowledgments:

Introduction Part 1 of 11

Speech and Thought Part 2 of 11

Speech Part 3 of 11

What is the volume of speech?

What is the rate of speech?

What is the latency of speech?

What is the tone and rhythm of speech?

Thought Part 4 of 11

Thought Form Part 5 of 11

Do you have a sense of where they are going with their thoughts?

Thought Content Part 6 of 11

Delusions Part 7 of 11

Overvalued Ideas Part 8 of 11

Thought Possession Part 9 of 11

Questions Part 10 of 11

Q1. How would you rate the information on this particular page?

Q3. Would you recommend this website to other people?

Module 8: Delivering Your Speech

Power of the Pause

To Watch: Reggie Watts

What to watch for:

10.3 Vocal Delivery

Speaking for Engagement

Vocal Variety

Speaking for Clarity

Articulation

Pronunciation

“Getting Plugged In”

Key Takeaways

Volume and the Public Speaker: Be Heard and Be Effective

Goal 1: Be Heard

Strategy 1 – Minimize noise distractions

Strategy 2 – Minimize the distance to the audience

Strategy 3 – Raise your volume to reach the person in the back row

Strategy 4 – Adapt as necessary

Goal 2: Be Effective

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