How is your Teachers Voice?Your teachers voice is the voice you use when you're standing in front of your class. It's your professional voice and often different in quality from our day-to-day ordinary speaking voice. So how is your teaching voice?
What does this mean for the teachers voice? In a nutshell it means that what you do with your body while you explain the lesson is actually more influential than the words themselves. If you want energised, focused, actively listening students then you need to mirror that in your actions. The trick is to SHOW while you are TELLING what you've got to share is exciting, relevant and important. This the congruency Brian Tracy is talking about in the extract above. Our body, tone of voice and words must match. Achieving Congruency Some people achieve congruency of body language, tone and words intuitively. They are the performers who know how to hold an audience's attention effortlessly. Others of us need to learn conciously. In case you are tempted to judge yourself harshly; it is not a question of better or less than but merely one of difference. In fact, often the person who learns these skills consciously has more control and flexibility once they've mastered them. Why? Because they can stand back from themselves, analyse their results and adjust accordingly. The person who just 'does it' does not have the overview of their behaviour. Where do I begin? Body Language A great start to re-energizing your teaching voice is to understand body language. I've a page of body language basics here. I'm sure once you've read it you'll realise you know most of it already. What you didn't consciously understand though is that you have the power to choose what story your body language tells. Even though the page is an elementary beginning, you'll find enough to start experimenting with how you deliver your lessons. Vocal variety Your next step is to look at vocal variety. A teachers voice needs to reflect passion but more than that it needs flexibility. This means having a wide variety of tonal expressions and other skills to select from. You can find exercises to develop vocal variety here. Rest assured they are fun, easy to learn and EFFECTIVE! Get the Power of the Pause Do you know the trick of using the power of the pause? Timing is the key. Silence can speak louder than words. Find out about pausing for emphasis here. Putting the Brakes on Motor Mouth Perhaps you need exercises to slow your speech down? A teacher's voice rattling off its information at high speed will lose many students quickly. There are exercises for developing flexibility of speech rate here. Fast is one option. Give yourself some more. Getting Clarity Do your students have difficulty clearly hearing your words? If you habitually speak without sufficient articulation, there is a page of fun tongue twister exercises here to help. Yes, there is a lot to learn but these pages are a great start. Your teachers voice IS important. It's the vehicle for transmitting your knowledge, your passion, your concern...in short all the things that made you excited about becoming a teacher. And lastly, breathing. How you breathe underpins voice quality and health. Good breathing and postural habits are essential for maintaining your voice. Do read and then practise these breathing exercises. You'll find not only will they improve the quality of your voice but tension will fall away as well. Go well. Have fun developing your teachers voice. Remember you're never just a teacher, you are a motivational speaker. PS If you have specific & ongoing voice health issues, please be sure to check out my voice health page. Get the help you need now. PPS I apologise for the missing apostrophe in the phrase 'teachers voice'. It's a glitch to do with setting up and building the page that I unwittingly created for myself when I first wrote it. If I go back to fix it I run the risk of the page disappearing from search engines and I don't want that to happen! I've put it down as a learning experience and there'll be no more embarassing mistakes like that from now on! Take me to the Vocal Variety page Go to the Body Language basics page Get exercises for slowing Motor Mouth Go to the Power of Pause Get those Articulation or Diction exercises here Learn to Breathe Fully Go to the Voice Health page Click to see a full Site Map here Find out About Me - the person behind this site. Return to Home Page
|
