Contents
Voice Tips from Janet Howd
Creative Articulation - Annie Morrison
Working with Local Education Authorities
Pronunciation Difficulties for Overseas Trained Teachers (OTT’s)
Importance of Clear Spoken English
Voice Tips from Janet Howd
Saturday began superbly for voice practitioners – To Breathe Out!
Getting rid of dead air prepared us for an inspiring practical workshop led by Janet Howd, international voice exponent and author of “Breath of Life or Kiss of Death”. We focused on common difficulties found in the teaching voice.
With teachers secure in their subject knowledge, we, as voice practitioners, can demonstrate effective methods of commanding classes through “being extraordinary”, in our use of breath, posture,
“a loving voice” and changing pitch. Finally, we worked together, finding one word tips beginning with each letter from the word VOICES – with some staggering results! It was refreshing to learn that having a Verruca and eating Cake were indeed not helpful for the voice, nor something I encountered in my voice research this year at Central!
Josie Peer, MAVS student 06/07
Creative Articulation - Annie Morrison
Annie is an SLT/VT with 30 years of experience in therapy and teaching. Many attending expressed their desire to have a whole day, if not a whole weekend, dedicated to her topic. Annie’s
approach is intuitive, imaginative and playful, and also fully anchored in the physical and clinical. Every exercise was practical and applicable to the work we do. Her warm up gently moved us from our toes to our tongues, giving insight into the vocal, physical andeven spiritual need for each exercise. Annie then demonstrated carefully structured procedures for the voice teacher to help clients and students remedy faulty articulation. We concentrated on the difficult /s/ sound. She says the brain needs to be tricked in order to find a new ways of creating a sound someone might have been making incorrectly for years. We worked on /t/, /d/, and /r/ before we had to call time because people were going to miss their trains. The feeling in the room was, More Please!
Suzanne Parke
Working with Local Education Authorities
Liz Burroughs and Lesley Hendy
Liz and Lesley discussed the problem of persuading LEAs to provide teachers with voice training. Liz is NQT Induction Coordinator for West Sussex. She gave a presentation highlighting where voice care and projection fit into teacher training, not only in NQT induction, but also in staff support, and professional development. She advocates targeting specific groups for training, citing those in Return to Teaching programmes and the increasing number of HLTAs – (Higher Level Teaching Assistants).
The ratio of teachers to TAs will soon be rising from 1:1 from 1:2. Liz keenly supports voice training, working closely with Lesley in West Sussex. Lesley said we need to convince the ‘Liz Burroughs’
of other LEAs that voice work is an imperative.
Suzanne Parke
Pronunciation Difficulties for Overseas Trained Teachers (OTT’s)
Mike Hendy
Mike demonstrated his experience and depth of knowledge on the subject as he explained what ‘OTT’s’ must do to pass the assessment to teach.
Speaking issues included: harshness, rudeness, rushing, shovelling vowels and jumbling syllables, lack of confidence and inaudibility, over-pitching from anxiety, lack of intonation and variation, and
delayed response time due to thinking time.
He discussed language awareness, highlighting word order, vocabulary and use of tenses. And he mentioned pronunciation, consonant substitution, vowel glides (or lack of them), stress and intonation. Finally Mike pointed out that unheard sounds are unutterable. Following the work of Alfred Tomatis, Mike talked about how assisting OTTs to hear sounds they have not heard
before will help them enormously to speak them.
Suzanne Parke
Importance of Clear Spoken English
Philip Bliss and Phyllida Furse
Since the issue was first raised at the July ‘06 Year of the Teacher’s Voice conference at Central, Phyllida and Phillip have run two VCN programmes in London and Birmingham, bringing
a short version to the ASM, to discuss pronunciation and articulation issues for non-native English speakers. Phyllida shared a series of slides and exercises combining articulation work
with phonetics. Phil supported the presentation with experiential anecdotes and an exercise called ‘Tongue Cam’: a kinaesthetic-sensory experience to aid in the learning of oral anatomy. Phil has written a paper on the importance of spoken English skills training in business for the Central School of Speech and Drama, and generously given this paper to VCN. Contact the office for
details.
Suzanne Parke