DRAMA – 4

This week, firstly, we talked about animation in voice, vocal fitness,

paralanguage, spontaneous and deliberate variations, creating characters and
influencing credibility.

The voice, which is our unique musical instrument, is an important element

to create and modify the meaning, but this should occur in a completely natural
fashion for the speaker. So, as aspiring teachers, we should take the voice into
consideration and we should know where to start and stop. We should also know
how to say in addition to knowing what to say, as Aristotle mentioned.

Moreover, like actors, we should do some vocal exercises and treat our
voices with care such as practicing deep diaphragmatic breathing, avoid
smoking, maintaining relaxed throat muscles, drinking plenty of water etc.;
because we are dependent on our voices to project and express ourselves in the
class. While teaching, since we are the models, we should be aware of what and
how we pronounce.

We also talked about paralanguage, which is a way of communication

without using linguistic structures. It conveys emotions and attitudes, and
includes the pitch, volume and intonation of speech. These elements play an
important role in human speech communication and we use them consciously or
unconsciously. If we use those variations in the class, we convey our enthusiasm
to our students, which attracts their attention much more and increases levels of
comprehension.

Then we mentioned spontaneous and deliberate variations in our voice.

Spontaneous variations are vocal variations initiated subconsciously. Those
variations grow out of an involvement in our thought. Our voices naturally
manifest any emotion such as amazement, surprise, thrill etc. In order to make
our ideas captivating and their full connotative meaning clear, we should use as
much of our natural vocal range as possible. When we come to deliberate
variations, we say that we should use those four vocal characteristics in order to
provide specific vocal emphasis to our ideas: Pitch; the highness or lowness of
the voice, is used to reflect lots of emotions and connotations. While rising pitch
indicates incredulity or questioning, a lowered pitch indicates finality and
certainty. In the class, we should use pitch to encourage our students, to convey
feelings, to manage the classroom conversation flow and not to kill our students
of boredom. Volume; we should use volume changes to call attention and to
convey a particular urgency or commitment about a statement, but we should
also note that an adequate general volume is a fundamental necessity for us.
Quality; in order to make our students listen to us for hours on end, we should
try to maintain a pleasant quality which is devoid of any annoying effects. We
should also listen to our voices on tape in order to determine whether our voice
quality is pleasant. Rate; is varied by changing the overall speech speed, by
changing the duration of a word or by using pauses of various lengths. Overall
rate or duration might be selected depending on our purpose and using pauses
might enhance the likelihood of students’ learning. We shouldn’t forget that if we
speak at a moderate and varied pace, students are less likely to be noisy and
more attentive to learning.

Creating characters by using vocal changes such as we mentioned is

important especially in reading classes. Using different qualities for each
character in a story makes it easy for students to understand the plot and
character interaction and holds their interest.

The speaker’s expression influences his/her credibility and this credibility

influences the listeners’ comprehension and retention. So in the class we should
establish credibility to motivate our students and to make them believe in our
expertise and interest in the subject matter. Therefore, being natural is very
important; our expression should make sense and reflect our true feelings.

Secondly, we talked about classroom space and proxemics. The use of

classroom space is significantly effective in teaching and learning process. We
should walk around the class not sit in order to monitor our students. Proxemics,
is the physical space between interacting people. It is all about how non-verbal
communication among and between people is affected by distance. Like facial
expressions, gestures and postures, space also speaks. In daily life, we do not
plan our every placement but the proxemic message is still present. As teachers,
we should be aware of the value of proxemic messages in the class and we
should plan our placement. For example, when we ask one of the students a
question, we should walk away from him/her in order to make him/her feel more
comfortable. We also shouldn’t forget that sometimes touching may be
dangerous.

Another point I learnt in this lesson is that when we enter the class, we can
ask some questions to reduce tension and feel comfortable.

Unfortunately, this week, I missed the last two hours.

Munise ÖZTÜRK