Voice Power

Elements of Voice

✤ Volume
✤ Fluency
✤ Speed
✤ Intonation
✤ Hesitation
✤ Stutter
✤ Mispronunciation
✤ Stress
✤ Pause
Cicero

■ “Without good delivery, the best

speaker cannot be of any
account at all.”

■ How far do you agree with Cicero that the most important
thing in a presentation is how you sound?

■ What’s the difference between pausing and hesitation? How

can a good use of pausing be helpful to both speaker and
audience?
Mark Twain

■ “No word was ever as effective as

a rightly timed pause.”

■ Read the quote aloud.

■ If you could pause just once, where would you pause?

■ Try two, three or four pauses. Which version sounds

best?
Gerry Spence

■ “I learned that the spaces between

words were as important as the
words themselves.”

■ Read the quote aloud.

■ Try pausing for a second after “spaces between words”.

■ Now try two, three and four seconds. How long is too long?
✤ Listen to the advice of presentations.

✤ Which version sounds more like a presentation and

which sounds more like a conversation?

✤ Now, complete the chart

Conversation vs presentation
conversation presentation
a. Speak faster?

b. Speak louder?

c. Pause more?

d. Sound more fluent?

e. Sound clearer?

f. Sound more interesting?

 Pause - Stress

✤ What type of words tend to be stressed?

✤ What do you notice about where the pauses come?

Preferred Style of Presenting

✤ Relaxed and conversational

✤ Smooth and professional

✤ Passionate and enthusiastic

✤ Light-hearted and humorous

Listening

■ Listen to two versions of the same presentation. How

are they different?

■ What are fillers?

The Obama “Uh” Count

■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_q4PJeP7V0
Other People’s Money
Other People’s Money

■ Read the descriptions of the two characters

✤ What is the name of the company?
✤ What problem is the company facing?
✤ Why do you think Garfield is known as Larry the Liquidator?
✤ What is Garfield’s relationship with the company?
✤ Who will benefit from Garfield’s plan?
✤ Who will suffer?

■ Think of 4 adjectives to describe each character.

Listening

■ How do the two speakers’ styles compare? Think

about pace, volume, and sentence length.

■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRhrow3Jws

■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q
Andrew Jorgenson

■ speaks slowly and deliberately

■ uses quite long sentences, but breaks them up with frequent

pauses

■ a very emotional speech

■ uses a lot of imagery of death and destruction

■ builds up from a quiet opening to a louder closing personal

attack on Garfield
Lawrence Garfield

■ speaks in short staccato sentences

■ uses simple words and a certain amount of sarcastic humor

■ varies his voice a lot, switching from almost a whisper to

louder sections

■ echoes Jorgenson’s death theme, but turns it around,

claiming the company had destroyed itself before he arrived
Practice

✤ Prepare a 45 second speech

using one of the speech
openers. Remember to try to
not use fillers.