Utterback Voice Tips

This link will take you to the Voice Updates section of Dr. Ann Utterback's web site, where you will find resources to help your students with their voices.

http://www.utterbackpublishing.com/voiceupdates.html

Perfecting Talent Performance in Voice and Delivery

Students often ask: Do I need a voice coach?
For 95 percent of your students the answer is NO.
The human voice is unique for a variety of reasons. Your challenge as an instructor is to help your students make the most of the voices they have.
Terry Anzur's presentation at AEJMC will focus on simple things you can do to raise awareness of the qualities that make your voice authoritative and easy on the ears.
Awareness training includes:

-Writing as the foundation of good performance;

-Time management to calm your breathing and prepare your delivery;

-Proper breathing techniques;

-Interpreting the script;

-Identifying and fixing problems.

Terry and co-author Tony Silvia are currently addressing these issues in a textbook that is due to be published in 2010: "Power Performance: Storytelling for Multimedia Journalists."

Get a preview at AEJMC with a handout on voice quality, plus information on how your students can benefit from the same type of talent coaching used by working professionals on TV, radio and the web. For more information visit: http://www.terryanzur.com/.

About Terry: As a talent coach in broadcast and multimedia, Terry has worked with anchors, reporters, weather forecasters and program hosts in the US, Canada and overseas. She developed her teaching techniques while on the faculty at the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication. She also speaks from on-air experience at the major market and network level. She is currently the voice of the nationally syndicated Good Housekeeping reports on local TV stations and the internet.

Dealing with Dialects

Based on content from “Your Voice and Articulation (4th Edition)
by Ethel C. Glenn, Phillip J. Glenn and Sandra Forman
and including contributions from my colleague Carrie Klypchak, at Texas A&M-Commerce

OUTLINE FOR Tony DeMars presentation on this panel, “Dealing With Dialects,” where I will talk about how dialects are not necessarily bad, and how students can learn to be "code switchers" -- they become bi-dialectal -- speaking their native dialect when they want and then can switch to Standard American dialect when appropriate.

The Standard American Dialect
•Dialect - a variation pattern of speech features within a given language that is characteristic of certain native speakers.
oVs. Accent – that usually refers to patterns from a speaker’s native language spilling over into production of a second language.
•Every person has a dialect
•Dialects vary in:
oVocabulary
oRhythm
oPronunciation

•Dialects can mark:
oGeographic areas
oEthnic and national groups
oSocioeconomic distinctions (upper class, working class, etc.)
oUrban vs. Rural

•Standard American
oGained widespread acceptance
oPreferred pronunciation in dictionaries
oGenerally associated with people living in parts of the North, Midwest, and West.
oStandard American is a dialect (not an ‘absence of dialect’) and has become most commonly accepted and employed in:
•Entertainment
•Education
•Business
•Political Worlds

Social Impact of Dialects
•People judge others by how closely they can speak
•Often how well people can speak standard American speech is a point of judgment (studies suggest – success, intelligence, ambition, credibility).
•We are always adapting how we speak for different people and in different situations – Learning to speak standard American is no different.
•Dialects – like language – evolve over time.

Positive Aspect of Dialects
•Help establish group membership
•Non-standard does not mean substandard
•You are not asked to give up the way you speak, but to become bi-dialectal or multi-dialectal
•Think of dialects as codes and become a proficient “code switcher”

Coaching students toward recognizing their own dialect
•African-American dialect?
•Southern dialect?
•Other specific examples

A Good Communicator – has a broad repertoire to choose the most effective way to connect to a designated receiver.

Voice Panel Resources

Broadcast Voice Handbook- Ann Utterback

Click here

Ann Utterback on YouTube- Breathing

Ann Utterback on YouTube- Maintaining a healthy voice

The Speaker's Voice-David Alan Stern

Click here

Stern Accent Reduction CD

Arthur the Rat

(a short reading that contains all 40 phonemes in spoken English)

Once there was a young rat named Arthur, who could never make up his mind. Whenever his friends asked him if he would like to go out with them, he would only answer, "I don't know." He wouldn't say "yes" or "no" either. He would always shirk making a choice.

His aunt Helen said to him, "Now look here. No one is going to care for you if you carry on like this. You have no more mind than a blade of grass."

One rainy day, the rats heard a great noise in the loft. The pine rafters were all rotten, so that the barn was rather unsafe. At last the joists gave way and fell to the ground. The walls shook and all the rats' hair stood on end with fear and horror. "This won't do," said the captain. "I'll send out scouts to search for a new home."

Within five hours the ten scouts came back and said, "We found a stone house where there is room and board for us all. There is a kindly horse named Nelly, a cow, a calf, and a garden with an elm tree." The rats crawled out of their little houses and stood on the floor in a long line. Just then the old one saw Arthur. "Stop," he ordered coarsely. "You are coming, of course?" "I'm not certain," said Arthur, undaunted. "The roof may not come down yet." "Well," said the angry old rat, "we can't wait for you to join us. Right about face. March!"

Arthur stood and watched them hurry away. "I think I'll go tomorrow," he calmly said to himself, but then again "I don't know; it's so nice and snug here."

That night there was a big crash. In the morning some men—with some boys and girls—rode up and looked at the barn. One of them moved a board and he saw a young rat, quite dead, half in and half out of his hole. Thus the shirker got his due.


Terry Anzur's web site
Click here