Naming Rights
I was chatting with a friend this morning about a pair of speakers she heard recently. Both had less than common, potentially hard to pronounce names. One of these women, acknowledged the difficulty and broke it down for the audience…
I was chatting with a friend this morning about a pair of speakers she heard recently. Both had less than common, potentially hard to pronounce names. One of these women, acknowledged the difficulty and broke it down for the audience…
Two things happened today that reminded me of the things we miss. My kid is getting an award and the presentation is happening over Zoom. The original date was deep in the quarantine period and so very canceled. It is…
What if you chose the clearest path to what you need to say? Without reaching for a metaphor or imagery of any type. What if you didn't try to make it funny, or deflect it? Communication is funny in this…
What is your natural rate of speech? Does it change depending on the situation? In the studio, I observe some of the fastest speakers and the slowest. In general, our goal is to get the maximum intelligibility at a speed…
Have you ever had the experience of delivering the perfect response to a situation, well after the fact and in your own mind? Yeah, me too. How about watching your words land in the room as you desperately wish for…
Last week there was an interesting finding out of MIT indicating that COVID-19 is detectable in speech patterns (article here). This wasn't the first time we've heard of this potential as there are studies at Carnegie Mellon and in the…
I was recently chatting with a woman who is back to work as a server in a restaurant. She expressed the concern that people couldn't understand her and were asking her to repeat herself often. This is a valid concern.…
"Difference is not Disorder." I'm not sure where exactly I first heard this concept but it quickly became fundamental in my teaching. The point is this: If a sound fails to match your expectation for that sound, that doesn't mean…
It seems like there was a sudden shift from a pandemic to a world roiling with protests. With the very public murder of George Floyd by the police, some people began to notice racial inequality, criminal police activity, and white…
I am in a training session this week for Knight Thompson Speechwork. One of the activities was so much fun, I am prompted to offer a version of it here. You will want a clean spoon and a mirror or…