Phonetic Transcription

Weekly account of class:

For this week lesson, we focused a lot more on phonetics and our pronunciation of words. We started off with the usual warm up games. During the first warm up game ('whoosh' game), one of the thing that Claire picked out and mentioned was how the way the game is started by one player will affect the atmosphere of the game subsequently. For example, this week, Claire passed the 'whoosh' to Leon, who then passed it on to me, then Cass, followed by Nicholas. Just so happened, all four of us were rather lethargic and hence we did it with minimal energy, evidently filled with tiredness. The whole 'low energy' was passed on to the others. Claire called the game to a pause, and was telling us about how it was an example that solely by the voice, you can affect the response and mood of the other participants. 

I felt that this was something that we could all take note of. Especially when we are doing our presentations alone and we can only rely primarily on our voice to attract, distract, affect the mood of the listeners - we really have to ensure we manage to 'hype' the audience up with our voice, rather than bore them and worst, lose their attention because our voices were not impactful enough. 

For this week breathing exercises, I felt a lot more at ease while doing them and struggled a lot lesser. I can feel that my body was getting more used to the exercises and hence it was relatively easier for me. We were also going on to more developmental exercises, as now we were doing the inhaling and exhaling exercises for a longer duration. We attempted the 6-4-12 (breathe in, hold, breathe out) and this progressive exercise aimed at training the expansion of our lungs. Hopefully by doing these continuously for the next few weeks, I will be able to feel that my lungs capacity has got a little bit larger. 

The main activity for the session was going through the transcription that we have done for a poem prior to the class. I think the class did rather well in transcribing the poem as majority of us managed to do it right. However, while transcribing the poem, I did faced some difficulties. One of the major mistake I made was confusing the 's' and the 'z' in words like becomes, wines etc. I felt that many a times, such mistakes was due to the way I pronounced such words daily. The wrong pronunciation hence led to me transcribing these words wrongly. 

Something that I feel I will be referring to quite often in the next few weeks given that I have difficulties pronouncing my words properly!

We then went on to discuss about the emphasis on certain words. We were introduced to schwa (which refers to reading a word at half a beat), short vowels (one beat) and long vowels (those that have two vowels together or with the ':' - two to two and a half beat). These determined whether the words are to be emphasize on and whether it should be elongated or are they words that require us to just touch and go, reading only the consonants. By mastering such a skill, it will to produce a natural accent as well. 

Takeaway from this session/Research findings: 

I was reading up about phonetics and chanced upon some anatomy with regards to the vocal tract which interest me (since I am a sports science student). Picture below show where exactly the different sounds can be produced. Inside the larynx are two tiny but very important membranes, commonly called vocal cords, but usually referred to as vocal folds by phoneticians. These membranes are set into vibration by the passing air, producing sound. They are controlled by a set of muscles and cartilage which allows them to change their shape, and consequently the quality of sound they produce, including changes in pitch. Once the vibrating column of air had passed through the larynx, its shape can be moulded into different sounds as it passes through the vocal tract.

Speech sounds are also said to be of two major types - vowels and consonants:

Vowels are speech sounds produced with no obstruction to the air flow coming from the lungs. They can take on their different sound qualities by subtle changes of shape in the vocal tract as they are being produced. Consonants, on the other hand, are speech sounds that involve a momentary interruption or obstruction of the air flow. They can be described and differentiated from each other by using three main classifications: voice, place, and manner of articulation. 

Peccei, J. (n.d.). Phonetics for Beginners. Retrieved February 15, 2017, from http://jcarreras.homestead.com/rrphonetics1.html

Acoustics of the Vocal Tract

Weekly account of class: 

This week class started off with the usual warm up games followed by the breathing exercises. This time, we took it up a notch and instead of the 8-4-8, we did the 5-2-10 breathing exercise. At the start it was quite a struggle for me as I was not used to exhaling for so long but on the third try, I felt that I could exhale the entire duration slightly better (struggling a little less!). Hopefully in the weeks to come, I will be able to carry out the breathing exercises a little better. 

On top of the usual breathing exercises, Claire added elements that were a little more challenging such as breathing in push up positions (which definitely required an extra intake of breath). Personally, as compared to doing normal push ups, bridges during my softball trainings, I felt that I could control my breathing better and this aided in me being able to sustain the position for a longer time (without feeling too tired). Given that this session was going to be focused on phonation, phonetic alphabets, Claire also had us practice our vowels pronunciation whilst doing the breathing exercises (a, e, i, o, u). 

We then proceeded to doing more breathing/mouthing exercises while standing up. First we got into pairs and positioned ourselves facing each other, palms to palms. While breathing and mouthing the vowels, we were to channeled our breathing and energy and pushed against one another, forcing the breath out till the very bit. For this exercise, my partner, Cass, managed to exhale longer than when she was lying on the ground. Personally, I managed to exhale the longest when we were pulling apart from each other while back facing. In this case, I feel like there were more breath coming out and it was much easier to channel them forward as well. It made me realised that different individuals can better control their breath in different positions, which I thought was very interesting. 

This session was very focused on the phonetic alphabets and articulations. Claire had all of us reading a tongue twister. While observing each of my course mates attempt the tongue twister, I managed to jot down a few pointers/Claire's comments that can aid in my journey to improving my articulation:

- Do not rush. Having a good rhythm while reading (anything) will naturally result in everything coming out cleanly and smoothly. Consistency is key! Everything can be solve by taking time to articulate. 

- Ending 'd's should always be emphasized i.e. toad, toed, ground

- Those with accents will tend to stretch their 'i', producing elongated sound (and this should be avoided) 

For my own performance, the main thing that I should take note and keep in mind was the 'd' sound in words like toad. In my case, I am unable to produce the clear 'd' sound when the vowel is much more in front as compared to words like ground. In the case of 'toad', my 'd' sound will tend to come out as a 't' at the end. Claire said that it was all about the mentality and habit and some changes will take some time given that I am very used at pronouncing it this way. Shall aim to pay more attention to such words and hopefully work on them. 

Takeaway from this session/Research findings:

Through this session, I came to understand that being in different positions expands our lungs differently and each of us have a certain position which we would be able to inhale and exhale a lot better. I went to further read up some of the other ways which we could help in building stronger and healthier lungs.

There are more poses which can be found on http://www.yogajournal.com/category/poses/anatomy/lungs/ and these different positions can help stimulate the lungs and at the same time, help strengthen certain parts of the body (shoulders, lower back) and I feel this can also help in our body postures. 

In terms of pronunciation/articulation, I managed to find some practices that I can inculcate which hopefully can help me in improving my pronunciation when I speak.

1. Paying attention to my tongue when speaking, some examples include:
- “L” sound: tongue should touch the back of your front teeth and the top of your mouth, just behind your teeth.
- “R” sound, tongue should not touch the top of your mouth. Pull your tongue back to the middle of your mouth, near where it naturally rests if you weren’t saying anything. As you say the sound, your lips should be a little rounded.
- “TH” sound. Put tongue between your top and bottom teeth. Your tongue should stick out a little between your teeth, and as you push air out of your mouth, let some air escape between your tongue and teeth—that’s what makes the sound.

2. Breaking words down into sounds (by syllables). This can help in the articulation by reading each part slowly, and pausing after each syllable.

3. Adding stress to sounds and words. This will allow me to pay more attention to each word instead of rushing through them, leading to slurring of words in between.

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For this week research, I also went to read up on what modulation is and how it plays a part in voice production. Modulation is a change in stress, pitch, loudness, or tone of the voice and an inflection of the voice and this is what gives the voice mood meaning and sounds attractive. Some of the few components of voice modulation included:

Pace or Speech speed (Pace): It must always be at a speed that the listener can understand. Put the pace at that speed where the listener can understand you properly. 

Pitch or Depth of voice: Keep it at a level that is comfortable for you and don’t strain your vocal cords. 

Pause: Pauses should be given at required intervals like where there is punctuation. It is given to let the listener absorb your information. It is given for emphasis and dramatic effect.

Power: In order to create power in your voice you should not speak from your mouth but from inside from the abdomen, make it commanding by generating intensity in your voice. 

Volume: Try and match your listener’s speech volume, unless they are shouting. Try dropping your volume so that they have to drop their volume to hear you. Maintain your volume according to the listener decrease or increase (do not shout to increase it be loud) 

Emphasis: Put emphasis by putting some pressure or focus on the key words or syllables in order to provide contrast to your words bring out their desired meaning. 

Inflection: Inflection means ups and downs of words. In combination inflection links meaning and feeling with your words.

Thought it would be quite useful to keep these few key points in mind, especially when we are preparing for our upcoming group presentation. Given that these key words are short and to the point, remembering it should not be a problem, but executing it will be a challenge!

Voice Modulation. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2017, from http://speakingenglishlanguage.blogspot.sg/p/voice-modulation.html
Yoga Poses for Lungs & Breathing. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2017, from http://www.yogajournal.com/category/poses/anatomy/lungs/
How to Greatly Improve Your English Pronunciation in 8 Steps. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2017, from http://www.fluentu.com/english/blog/how-to-improve-english-pronunciation/

Resonance

Weekly account of class: 

For this session, we started off with a new game – “whoosh” game and this game focused on how we can make an impact with our voice. The game was carried out in a circle, and we had to pass on the “whoosh” to the person beside us, or change the direction with a “wow”. Through the activity, I observed that there were a few individuals we had very loud and impactful voice and this was due to a few reasons.

1. Body Physique: One good example was Leon. Many of us had a good impression of Leon’s performance during the game and one of the contributing factor was due to his height. Given that he was tall in size, whenever he turned towards the person next to him and “whoosh” her, it had a lot more impact as compared to when someone smaller eg. Ben did it. Furthermore, with his height, it allowed him to feel more authoritative, much more ‘powerful’ and this captured the attention of everyone else.

2. Making use of body actions: When Claire demonstrated the game, she made use of her arms (opened them wide towards the person she was ‘whoosh’ing to) and she took a step forward towards them as well. Her loud voice accompanied with the hands actions really did gave off a very strong and impactful feeling.

3. Overtime excitement. One example was Wani, who got louder over the course of the game and started raising her voice at the end and at times where the people between her kept going back and forth. There was quite an evident difference in her tone and the impact it had as well. She started off speaking quite softly and hence it went unnoticed at times. However, when she raised her voice in the midst of excitement/ annoyance, it did catch my attention which I thought was a good example of how some people may come off as quiet and reserved, but when the situation calls for it, they are able to speak up and be loud and impactful as well.

After the usual warm up games, we then went on to the breathing exercises. For this session, I could feel that I was doing better at the exercises than the previous session. I was able to inhale and exhale for 8 seconds which lesser difficulty. This may be due to the fact that I did not have a blocked nose this session. Furthermore, I felt more accustomed to breathing through my nose and hence it may the entire exercise much more relaxing. This time, on top of the usual breathing exercises we did, Claire introduced to us breathing and humming techniques that worked our different body parts resonance – chest, abdomen, top of the head, cheeks, lips. We were to feel the vibration coming from these parts as we hummed and breathed out at the same time. At the start, it was a little hard to get used to given that many a times we rely on our chest to produce the sound and hence using the other parts was a little challenging. For me, I thought that feeling the vibration at the top of the head was the hardest. Hopefully in the weeks to come, I will be able to feel a stronger vibration at the top of my head.

The main activity we did for this session was having each person to go up and read a passage, and then having to see how our voice projection was like. In this activity, Claire had us describe the voice projection of each speaker in a shape. This shape was a description of how far and wide our voice could travel. According to my classmates, mine was an inverted triangle which stretched slightly above my head. I presume that this meant that my voice was slightly louder (as compared to those whose voice was trapped in a small circle at their mouth). However, my voice could not reach the audience at the side much – not wide enough.

Takeaway from this session/Research findings: 

I have learnt that the human body is fully of hollow, air-filled cavities that resonate when we speak and the main resonating chambers are – chest cavity, throat and the nasal cavities. While researching, I found out that if an individual’s voice is projected via the sinuses, this will result in a brighter, higher pitched and more nasal sound. On the other hand, voice produced from the chest cavity will be much deeper, rounded and resonant simply because the chest cavity is bigger. However, the tone of an individual is not fixed as it can be vary by simply changing the resonating chamber they are focusing on. This is where the breathing and humming exercises Claire had us do come in useful! 

Meikle, G. (2016, April 25). Developing an awareness and flexibility as to where in your body your project your voice from can help you develop a more interesting and powerful voice. Retrieved February 01, 2017, from https://www.inter-activ.co.uk/presentation-skills/voice/