Using Your Voice

Abstract

The way you speak controls how your presentation will be received. If your audience cannot hear you, finds your voice quality unpleasant, cannot understand your words, cannot keep pace with your delivery, or in some other way becomes frustrated by the way you speak, you will have failed to engage, connect, and inspire. It is helpful to recognize the qualities of good speaking and to identify what is working and what is not in your speaking voice. When speaking well in front of an audience, you are audible (using adequate volume), comprehensible (we can understand your words and what they mean because you are using good diction), and sonorous (using appropriate pitch and a pleasant tone). In addition, good speakers use an appropriate pace and remove distracting fillers.