AAU28D: Voice Study and Production Lesson Ten

Having come to the final lesson, our hearts were a little heavy because there have been no lessons like this module. We began with a short Q & A session to clarify any last-minute doubts on the reflective journal and kicked off the day with some warm-ups. Pretending to an animal, then running and hopping around the class was pretty fun and I really felt this type of physical activities would help me a lot more to release my tension and relax my voice. As we progressed with the other games like catching and so on, I could not help but notice everyone else becoming really engaged like never before. As I looked upon the behaviours of people, I realised that this body language meant that everyone really felt like communicating more.

Body language is a universal, non-verbal communication where we convey signals to the recipient without speaking and accounts for more than 50% of all communication. The signals can come from our facial expressions, how we look at other people, whether our lips are turned up or turned down, whether our palms are facing up or down, how we open up our arms and legs, our posture while we sit or stand and even how close we are standing to each other. It may sound complex, but we tend to subconsciously pick up the signals and react accordingly (Cherry, 2018). It would be something really useful to me as I often encounter situations which I wanted to be a part of but have no idea how to start. Now that I am aware enough to give off signals of openness, it should make it easier for other people to accept me in the conversation and interact more with me.

With our energy levels elevated by the games we played, we soon moved on to the presentation. It was unique, as everyone was presented with a small Steve Jobs sticker while Ignatius started off by remembering the 7^th year and 26^th day anniversary of Steve Job’s death. I thought it was a little weird as the mood became somewhat awkward with the mention of his death because it could be phrased better, but my concerns were soon displaced as Steve Jobs was adequately reintroduced with mentions of his greatest achievements.

The key things to take note of was always mentioned in groups of 3, a method utilised by Steve Jobs and this fact was made used of brilliantly. The presentation helped as well because there were lots of pictures of Steve Jobs doing all sorts of stuff that they were describing throughout the presentation.

I learned here how the right choice of words could help dramatically in the presentation and the setting of the mood, like how Steve Jobs described the iPad from ‘just xx thick’ to ‘super thin’. Along with how the nexus of Steve’s take-home message is compressed within 140 words to fit a tweet, these are very important but yet easy to miss points that were brought up. The presentation was easy on the ears overall and successfully implemented all the great tips that came from Steve Jobs!

Finally, the last activity of the day was to commence with the balloon debate. It is where we take a famous person and argue over who should stay in the safety of the balloon because the balloon is sinking over the hungry shark-infested sea. In short, we have to win over the audience to win the spot in the balloon and move on to the next stage. I was lucky to be in the first and final group to actually try out the balloon debate in class. The key to the balloon debate was to be active and constantly participate in the debate as the famous person we have chosen. Our group consist of Shawn, Hadi, Ian, Wei Suen and me, which was great as Shawn and Ian got the ball rolling for the rest of us who weren’t sure where to start.

Wei Suen who picked the artist Van Gogh was the first to get off the balloon because she was not able to make any claim at all as to why Van Gogh should stay in the balloon. As the debate went on, Shawn got booted out next followed by Hadi while they got confused as to my claim as Nikola Tesla who can remove all the advanced form of technology in the world. I quickly realised that what we say did not have to be valid, but the key was to constantly make any point at all and maintain active. I eventually triumphed over Ian, who could not make a stronger sense logically over any of my claims! It was unexpected but a fun activity that will definitely stay in my memory for sure!

A final photo of our Wednesday 1230-1530 class (unfortunately without Ryan)

AAU28D: Voice Study and Production Lesson Nine

It’s finally time for my group presentation this week. I could not help feeling nervous despite preparing because Ryan, Corliss and Ian are much better speakers than I am. Nervousness aside, the lesson begins with a discussion on the objectives of a presentation. I originally thought that all presentations are the same, but the style of presenting differs from one person to another. I turned out to be wrong as the lesson went on about how different type of objectives requires us to present differently. An educational presentation will show more information to the audience because they're too many important information to impart to the audience who knew little to nothing about the topic at all. At the same time, the simple language should be used so that the audience can take in the information easily and can start digesting the information that has been presented to them. As such, the pace of the presentation will vary according to the level of understanding that the audience has which will have to be confirmed from time to time. While this concept is not new to us, it is something that we do not often experience even in university! In my personal opinion, there is a general misguided concept with the style of presentation and the type of presentation as it was with me.

Gould (2017, July). Argument picture.

A persuasive speech is an argumentative presentation. We are really familiar with argumentative essays since our secondary school time and we all know that ultimately, an argument meant that there will be disagreement. The interesting thing I learnt was that we are unable to defend against every criticism. I looked up for an example of how disagreements in a presentation are dealt with because it’s not a common situation that I often encountered. A disagreement arises from offending someone but is almost unavoidable in discussions about provocative views because being able to disagree is a right of free speech. To argue is to communicate with the audience, and the criticism is their view. As such, it is advised to take a step back and paraphrase and relay back the question such that everyone else with a different view can correctly understand the opposing viewpoint. We should never get defensive about a criticism but instead try to focus on the facts that are being presented (Evans, 2015).

Overall, our group presentation seems rather good according to Prof Matt and none of the audience had much to say about it. However, I personally felt that I could have done better if I was able to inject my words with more emotions and say them out loud. It was not a problem while we were practising but I was not able to overcome my nervous energy with my emotions. Ryan, Corliss and Ian presented brilliantly, though Ian almost did not shake off the fervent energy from when he read that poem about anxiety. There was the part about Corliss’ hair and Ian’s hat covering their faces being an issue, so I looked that up. I was surprised to learn that it is also linked to turning the lights off as an article states that turning off lights or potentially blocking the view of our faces will prevent the audience from focusing on us. If they cannot focus on us, they will not be able to connect with us as well and will lead to lesser audience engagement (Rister, 2012). Nevertheless, I am glad to have learnt more about presentations than I ever did before!

AAU28D: Voice Study and Production Lesson Eight

Having the imagination and creativity to taste the words allows us to realise the full potential of words. It leads to making our speech more interesting and being able to let go will free up our voice and let us gain the confidence to speak. The game Moving Day really helped a lot in the class as shrieking and screaming were heard all around the room. It’s a pity though, as I am not used to playing around since I had childhood asthma when I was little. Despite making full recovery, I missed out on the opportunity to be bold and mix around with everyone else. I admired people who are running around playing to their heart’s content and spent more time analysing how are they having fun.

My reactions are slow, but I figure that I can probably get involved in a group activity more so as to become more active as a person and warm up quicker. This is a goal to achieve if I want to make my warming up exercise work as it should. We went through the game This Is My next, and I struggled to keep up. It also indicates how I should try to memorise and associate items with certain memory. Hence, I went to look up more memory technique and stumbled upon the memory palace technique.

Fadul (2017, March). Mind palace picture

It’s a technique created by Simonides of Ceos more than 2000 years ago because back then, information is not usually recorded, and people were mostly uneducated. Information was more commonly passed down by word of mouth and got more and more inaccurate when parts of the information get forgotten and replaced (Metivier, 2018).

What happens is that a palace within the mind is constructed. As we move along the walkway, there are rooms on each side of the wall. When the door opens, the room is filled with nothing and this is where we start to fill the room up with objects that remind us of the line that we want to memorise. Each room is filled up with different objects relating to what we want to memorise so when we revisit the mind palace, we should be able to recall our lines. I would hope to try this technique to memorise my script for the presentation.

The highlight of the day came when it’s time to start the group presentation on Donald Trump. The group this time round got even better than the previous group when it came to memorizing their scripts. This time around since the presentation did not have as much information given as before, I was able to pick up on the important learning points from the presentation. Each section of the presentation was properly structured in a logical manner and really suited to how I take in information.

The few things that were a pity in the presentation was that Wei Suen could have emphasized on some of the gestures that Donald Trump uses because the mini-video ran through all the gestures really fast. Also, the presentation tips at the end that was summed up by Meryl was pretty good although it was delivered in a way that her part seems unconnected to the rest of the presentation.

Some of the interesting things that I learned here was that the presentation should start with a person that has a higher energy because the energy level will carry over to the next person. Having the energy level go down will make it hard for the next person to pick it up again so the arrangement of who goes first and who goes last is actually something very important as well.

AAU28D: Voice Study and Production Lesson Seven

We began on a more serious note as the group presentations are starting. Generally, we were instructed regarding the tasks that we have to do, namely the reflection journal and the webinars which are actually known as Web seminar. It would probably be hard to do it like how the school is doing since we do not have access to the tools that the profs do but it would be interesting to think about how we can present effectively without an actual audience as the audience reactions do matter.

EBSCO Library Resources (2018, March). Webinar picture.

Since we are presenting to a huge spectrum of audience, the presentation should be able to cater to the general public. Putting a webinar into an internet presentation format however, does not require too much technology but it has its pros and cons as well.  Typical webinar presenters keep their title interesting and their content simply because they are interacting with the audiences online but with an internet presence, such interaction is simply not possible.

Bonelli (2018, May). Q&A picture.

As such, the focus can be placed on having interesting slides and creating an informative Q&A slide to address concepts that are commonly misunderstood. One interesting thing I have learnt over the years, will be to purposely create obvious loopholes within the content. By creating such loopholes, the audience will get curious, puzzled and start asking questions that you have prepared for. Sadly, such an unorthodox method can only work if the content is planned really well and you would require a really good understanding of the audience to successfully guide them to ask the right questions.

As I looked for resources on how to interact with audience through an internet presentation, there was an article about authenticity. More accurately, it describes how authentic, open-ended question will reach out more to the audience because of how the asking and answering such questions can relay sincerity (Morgan, 2015). It keeps the audience active throughout the presentation, thus bringing more life to the presentation.

We then got started with the activities to get us ready, and I found that lifting the ribs made some difference to breathing. It would be interesting to explore what difference it would make to speaking and projecting of the voice. A discussion on keeping the rib cage expanded talked about how the breath energy will be preserved and managed by the diaphragm, allowing a better control over the breath pressure. The balance of breath energy and laryngeal muscle activity will allow a resonating sound in the mouth called a chest voice.  It is a technique taught in classical singing but should not be used all the time because it is a complicated set of motion to maintain and would thus cause more distraction (Fraser, 2009).

Finally, we moved on to Rachael’s group presentation about Adolf Hitler. It was the first ever group live presentation we had, and the atmosphere was pretty tense because what they do today will set the bar for the next group.

The presentation started off strong and was really unique because of the ‘Heil Hitler’ salutes going on each time Hitler’s name is mentioned. They have done lots of research into to mindset of Hitler and presented how Hitler planned every action with a purpose. It’s something to think about because such dedication and careful preparation for presentation apply to us as well. There was quite an amount of content though and became more like presenting the life of Hitler than how his presentation preparation enthralled Germany. It could probably be better if more time was spent on explaining how and why Hitler’s actions worked so that we can take in all the information.

The energy of nervousness by the presenters only affected the speed of the presentation and I found it brilliant as they maintained control of the presentation from the start to the end. This is a problem that I am personally concerned with because I experienced stage fright before and had to make lots of effort to suppress the nervous energy each time. With Prof Matt’s comments on the presentation, I realised that every slide, every prop, and even down to our attire, the way we speak and how we speak is a part of the presentation. No stones are to be left unturned for the group presentation and I guess that is how my group should be prepared.

AAU28D: Voice Study and Production Lesson Six

The lesson started with learning about 4 different personalities, how they work and how they cannot work. By knowing how each type of personality tends to work, we will be able to predict their responses and what can get their attention and corporation. The idea of categorising people into their typical personality stereotype was always taught to us at some points of our life with the goal of helping us understand us and understand the others. I guess that it’s precisely how we were grouped from the last lesson. In any case, the general idea was that we should customise our presentation to cater to everyone so that we may achieve the goal of our presentation.

Kelly (2016, October). Football huddle picture.

Looking back at past lessons so far, I could not help but think that our role is in fact very similar to that of a politician seeking to convince the audience. This is because having the skills to articulate confidently, fluently and yet full of emotions sounds like what an actor needs to pull off a play perfectly. Throw in some psychological knowledge in the crafting of a speech or a presentation, and you will have a skilled politician-in-training who can charm the audience into faithful believers (even more so apparent as we take a look at Martin Luther King addressing the public) It would appear that the ability to speak properly and speak well have been high underrated by me so far!

There are so many techniques involved with speaking and I guess that is what the poetry reading is for. We moved on to poem reading after the warm-up activities where we activated our vocal apparatus and relaxed our stiff posture. Everyone had already picked up a poem of their liking and it seems that I’m quite attracted to the how William Blake writes. His words are so visual that I can play out the scene like a movie in my head, and it helped me to get a gist of he would have wanted to read his poem. However, to my dismay, I have not done enough research about what William Blake was doing while writing his poems as it turns out that him taking drugs would lend a feverous energy to whatever emotions that he is infusing into the poems.

Holden (2017, January). Visual poetry picture.

Of all the people coming up to do their poem reading, Ian stood out the most as he was acting and pouring a wild burst of energy into his anxiety poem. I was uncomfortable yet fascinated because the burst of energy he had kind of went way off from anxiety to maniacal, but he wasn’t bothered at all about putting on such a performance in class. It was something that I could never have done or dared to do because what he is doing is to amplify the emotions in the words and infecting everyone with one huge emotional outburst. The brief moment where he got the anxiety part right though, made a really big impression on me on how much emotions can affect the audience.

I was not able to do that with ‘Tyger Tyger’ but I am aiming to be able to have the ability to put my feelings across to the audience with future practices.

AAU28D: Voice Study and Production Lesson Five

We started the day with some heavy theory and as we got to the part about accent, I could not help but think about the differences between a dialect and an accent. Turns out, an accent shares the vocabulary with the main language itself and some different pronunciation. A dialect, on the other hand, is a variety of language differing in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Being an Asian, I am exposed to a multitude of spoken dialects that are so different that they may almost be a whole new language (Bolotnikov, 2015). Each dialect came from a different part of China, influenced by all the factors unique to the region and it helped me with understanding how there can be so many variations of accents in the United Kingdoms. The need for the creation of a standard English was thus highlighted to me as well, and here the IPA played a huge part. At the same time, I wondered if there are PA created specifically for each different accent as well since there are people who are fascinated with accents and it is vital for actors to learn how to portray themselves as any character needed in the play.

IPA Chart

Consonant Chart

We moved on into learning how the IPA chart is constructed, which was also very interesting because we can see that much thought was placed into its creation. By learning how each sound is articulated properly made it easier to move our vocal apparatus correctly. By combining the proper action and pronunciation, we are learning how to use our voice in the right manner as well. I found that making each sound separately was easier and does not strain the voice, and in combining the sounds to form words and forge sentences created the accurate unaccented standard English.

Guides to practising each sound accurately can be found online, but I found a video by linguist Evan Ashworth, PhD to be particularly useful. He showed how the articulators in the vocal tract work together to produce each speech sound by using a video to demonstrate voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation (Ashworth, 2015). I was having trouble with producing the ‘th’ sound properly in words like ‘think’ and ‘thought’ but sounded more like ‘sink’ and ‘sought’ but a visual representation of how the tongue should move helped.

Ashworth (2015, January). Affricate pronunciation picture.

We were then placed into groups to transcribe 5 sentences into the IPA form and it was quite fun because each time we were stuck with the transcribing, there is always a different member in the group who had the right idea. We were like different gears of a whole system and we worked in harmony to churn out the right result.

Personally, I felt that we were placed together on purpose to create a spectrum of different characters because everyone notices different things at the same time. It gave a good range of ideas from which we were then able to complete our task successfully. It can be something to look out for when creating a group for a group project because it will maximise the result with lesser effort!

AAU28D: Voice Study and Production Lesson Four

We started with the Zip Zap Boin game to get us moving. It’s a tough game for me since I do not have the greatest reaction time and I needed time to cope with the actions and reactions. It sure got me warmed up though as we carried on with the game, which helped to increase my ability to take in information from my surroundings at a faster rate. I thought that this would be great for studying too as being able to take in information quickly would greatly increase the efficiency of studying within a shorter span of time. We followed up with other warming-up activities and I felt my enthusiasm level increase because of the excitement in the air after some fun. The excitement level allowed me to put in more effort into the consonance training exercise in which I find myself being able to use my voice at a higher consonance more easily.

After the activities, we dived into some theory into how poems are written and how they should be read. Most poems that I have read before usually come with a rhythm but in fact, there are many more styles. Understanding the styles, the history and the mindset of the author changes the way we read poems entirely, which was rather new to me. I have once learnt how placing emphasis on a different word of the same sentence each time could change the meaning entirely but with poems, it is much more than that. Slowing down to read the words deliberately, infusing the right emotions into each word with the understanding of the intent behind the words allowed me to visualise clearly each scenario that was described by the poem and I really enjoyed the experience.

Sanders (2015, July). Donald Trump speech photograph.

We investigated how speeches are made by politicians like Donald Trump and saw how he was able to create a personal connection with the audience with brilliantly placed filler words and pauses. To me, it was the physical representation of how the pen is mightier than the sword because great ideas are penned down and planned properly before execution. By making use of well-placed words, we can inspire the emotion that we want in our audience such that they will start to personally believe in what we are saying. People tend to try and find reasons to accommodate what they have accepted, and in doing so will turn away any negative ideas that are associated with the belief. I realised that this was also how an actor can sway the audience, thus making a story come alive. This will be a very important tool for the future if we are able to polish our skills properly, which is something I hope to grasp in the module.