Vocal Delivery

Hi, class. This
is William again.

As you can see from your
grade sheet for both your

informative and your
persuasive speech,

that your grade is going
to be about 25% based on

the content of the speech
and 75% based on delivery.

Now there are nine elements of

delivery that you're
going to be graded on,

and they're the same
elements for both speeches.

Five elements are
in vocal delivery,

four elements are in
physical delivery.

In this video, I want to talk to

you about vocal delivery.

This is the use of our voice

to present the message
to the audience.

Your voice plays four important
roles in communication.

The first one is we use our
voice to produce words.

In other words, we say words.

I'm going to spend a lot of

time on this video about that.

I think we're all pretty
familiar with that role.

But saying words is actually not

the most important role

your voice plays
in communication.

The most important one

is something called
paralinguistics.

Now, paralinguistics is probably

a new term for many of you,

but the elements
probably are not.

For example, the word
linguistics, the root word.

Linguistics means language, and

para means side by
side, parallel.

When we are saying
words to somebody,

our voice is sending

messages parallel or side
by side with the language.

This is very important.

The reason for that is anytime

our paralinguistics and
our words do not match,

your audience will
tend to accept

the paralinguistics
rather than the words.

Now, what this basically
means is that we are

communicating messages through
things like tone of voice.

The third main role
that your voice

plays in communication is that

your voice has a powerful
psychological effect on others.

Now, many of you probably

have anecdotal evidence of this.

Somebody whose voice just

causes your blood
pressure to go up.

Maybe they speak with a whiny
voice or a squeaky voice.

They talk too loud, they talk
too quiet, whatever it is,

there's just something
about the sound of

their voice that
you find annoying.

This puts you in a
negative mindset

just as you're
evaluating their ideas.

Conversely, there are others

whose voice put you in a
very positive state of mind.

You could listen to
them speak about

almost any topic for an hour.

People like James Earl Jones,

who did the voice
for Darth Vader

in the Star Wars movies.

For CNN, this is CNN.

People who are able to create

that very positive
psychological effect on

their audience puts them in

a positive state of mind just

as they're evaluating
their ideas.

Finally, your voice actually has

a strong psychological
effect on you.

Research has suggested that

when you speak with
a more confident,

secure voice, you actually
become more confident.

If you speak with a very
timid or insecure voice,

it can actually
cause you to become

less confident and
your anxiety to rise.

Those are the four
important roles

that your voice plays
in communication.

The next thing I want to
talk to you about are

the five elements
of vocal delivery.

These are the five elements

that you're going to be graded

on in both your

informative as well as
your persuasive speech.

Please note that,

as indicated on the grade sheet,

these elements are not of

equal importance to one another.

The first one is enunciation.

Enunciation is pronouncing

the words correctly and clearly.

This is very important
in communication.

Your goal is to
make it as easy as

you possibly can for
your audience to listen.

Poor enunciation
requires the audience

to expend more energy to

try to understand
what you're saying.

The most common mistake
that people make in

enunciation is failing to

open their mouth enough
when they speak.

They just mumble like this.

Now, they probably think this

is okay because when they
talk to their friends,

they talk like this and

their friends understand
I'm just fine.

But when you're only talking
to one or two friends,

there's not a lot of ears
absorbing the sound.

When you're speaking
to an audience,

it becomes far more challenging.

You want to open your mouth and

pronounce the words
very clearly.

The next common mistake
that people make in

enunciation is they add

sounds to words
that do not belong.

The most common
sound that people

erringly add to a
word is the R sound.

For example, they might
say mention the state

of Washington or
wash the dishes.

The problem with this
is our ears are not

attuned to that sound
being added to the word,

and as a result, it causes
an internal distraction.

The second element of

delivery these are not
the order of importance.

The second one is projection.

Now, a lot of people
think projection

is talk loud enough
for everybody to hear.

In actuality,
projection is speak at

a volume so that your audience
can comfortably listen.

See, talking too loud
is actually just

as big of a problem as
talking too quietly.

Either of them cause

the audience to think
about your volume,

and any attention
they're paying to

your volume is attention

they're not paying
to your speech.

You want your volume
to disappear.

If the audience is not paying
attention to your volume,

you're doing
projection correctly.

The next element of vocal
delivery is vocal variety.

Now, a major advantage that

speakers have over
writers in terms of

communicating is

this wonderful instrument
we call the human voice.

We want to vary
that voice to not

only increase engagement
with the audience,

but also to help us convey

meaning through things
like paralinguistics.

Now, here I mentioned

two specific aspects of how
we want to vary our voice.

First is through tone or pitch.

This refers to how high
or how low you talk.

Now, the average
untrained adult voice

has a range of five notes.

That means you can speak at
five different notes with

virtually no strain on

your voice and no risk
of your voice cracking.

I want you to try to
utilize that five-note

range to vary your pitch or
tone throughout your speech.

Now, this does not mean I want

the first five notes to be

a scale and monotone
the rest of the way.

I want you to vary throughout.

This also does not mean that I'm

going to be in the
back counting notes.

You probably could accomplish

a good vocal variety and
tone with using three notes.

I say that I would like you
to try to expand that to

around five notes merely because

I used to say don't be monotone,

and that ended up
causing people to pick

two notes and ping
pong back and forth.

That was just as distracting
as a monotone voice.

The second way
that I want you to

vary your voice is
through rhythm.

Rhythm refers to your rate
or how fast you talk,

as well as your pausing.

If you only take notes during

one part of this video,
please have it be this.

Variation of rhythm is to spoken

word what punctuation
is to written word.

That's so important,
I want to repeat it.

Please again, get
this that variation

of rhythm is to spoken word,

what punctuation is
to written word.

Everything you know
about the importance

of punctuation in writing,

how it helps us convey the
meaning of our message,

please understand that
the exact same thing

applies to varying
our rhythm in speech.

If you give a five-minute speech

and there's no variation
of rhythm at all,

that would be like turning in

a four-page essay with no
grammar or punctuation.

It becomes very
difficult to understand.

But actually, no variation in

speech is worse than the
no punctuation paper,

because the no punctuation paper

allows the reader to be able to

go through it again and try to

piece together where the
punctuation would have been.

But when you're
listening to a speech,

you only get it once,
and as a result,

you don't have the
opportunity to go through and

correct their lack of variation.

This ends up leading
the audience to have

what we refer to as the
fallacy of competence.

Our brain knows that it
understood the words,

and it can pull out
a few of the topics.

Therefore, it concludes that it

must have understood
the message.

An example of the fallacy of

competence happens for
many of us in math class.

A math teacher is writing

on the board and goes
through how to do a problem.

As you listen to the
math teacher explain it,

you feel like you
understand how to do it.

But then you're told
to do a problem,

and suddenly you
look at it and you

realize you

didn't understand it like
you thought you did.

Well, after a speech, we
rarely get the opportunity

to be tested to find
out if we understood.

But that fallacy of competence

is still every bit as real.

The fourth element is a
fluid or smooth delivery.

With this, we want to cut out
things like audible pauses.

Audible pauses,
sometimes referred to

as filler words as uh,

like, you know, we
want to reduce those.

Another aspect of the
fluid smooth delivery is

we want to avoid
chasing the clock.

Chasing the clock happens
when maybe we've got

45 seconds left and we
don't have much to say.

So we start to talk
really slowly.

Now we're just really trying to

take 45 seconds to speak
10 seconds of the speech.

I would rather you just
finish the speech.

The fluid smooth delivery is,

I want you to stay
conversational.

Be professional. Don't get
into being too casual,

but still having nice
fluid smooth delivery.

Finally, the fifth
element is energy.

This is by far the
most important element

of vocal delivery.

With energy, it's simply
a sense of enthusiasm.

If you come across
like you're very

bored with your speech
or bored with a topic,

the audience will be more

likely to be bored with
the topic, as well.

Now, enthusiasm and energy

doesn't make the topic
more interesting.

Believe me, I wish that it did,

but being real low energy
can take interest away.

I have a personal
example of this.

There was a time that I
really enjoyed history.

I still enjoy reading about
it and learning about it.

But I actually considered

being a history
major at one time,

and I had a history
teacher, a super nice guy.

I really liked him, but
he was very low energy.

And some of you might have a
low-energy teacher yourself.

This is my impersonation of him.

The root cause of

the American Revolution was
the French and Indian War.

The French and Indian War was

a conflict between
the French and

their Native American allies

against the British and
their German allies.

The Native American tribes
believed that the French

would win the war because they
won the first two battles.

What they failed to realize is

the French had beaten
the Americans.

The British and the Germans
hadn't arrived yet.

Imagine listening to
that for two hours.

As interested as
I was in history,

it was hard to stay engaged.

These are the first five
elements of delivery.

These are the vocal elements

that you're going
to be graded on.

Please remember these
are not in the order of

importance and they're
not of equal importance.

If I were to place them
in order of importance,

I would put energy by
far the most important.

After that, enunciation and

projection are
approximately tied,

and then the fluid,
smooth delivery

and vocal variety are
approximately tied.

If you haven't
already, please now

watch the video on
physical delivery,

and that will present you
with the other four elements

of delivery. Thank
you very much.