Week 3 and 4

Over these 2 weeks I detected a change in my body responses during the breathing exercises and the humming. It was definitely much easier to control and moderate the intake and exhalation of breath – it was much more evenly spaced out and there weren’t sudden bursts of air rushing in or out. It also took a shorter time for the breathing to reach a normal rate after the warm up games that we had. In week 3, we continued to hum when doing floorwork. The isolation exercises proved that the tension created (intentionally) were impeding breathing and control. I have attempted to actually breathe through these tension points (just to try if it’s possible) but I proved to be awkward and difficult. Tension is really a hindrance when it comes to proper breathing!

 Thereafter, we began the humming – I had a little cold in week 4 and I could really feel it affecting the vibration, as well as the comfort levels in producing a nice resonant sound. When it came to directing the sound into the throat and nasal passage – it was really uncomfortable and I sensed some blockage and tension when I attempted to channel the vibration towards those areas.

We were told to vocalise our hums into sounds “mah-meh-mee-mai-mou-muu”. Many of my classmates were self-conscious – it felt as if no one dared to naturally progress into the sounds, as no one knew when to start the vocalization or how loud they should be. I guess this is one of the things that we must overcome when it comes to voice training – the relinquish of control and of being too self-conscious and becoming over-thinkers. We did the humming and vocalisations in different positions – lying on our backs, sitting up, in push up positions and its variants (which I found was quite difficult as the core was really tensed up). We also got into pairs and did it while pushing palm to palm, back to back etc. The pushing action creates an extra support for us to sustain our vocalizations.

Personally, I thought that it helped as it allowed us to clear any mental barriers or shyness that we might have and to focus on achieving a sustained, supported sound through the humming and vocalization.

Rodenburg (1992) talked about the effect of habits and that we should not confuse “natural” and “habitual” as they mean different things. “When we surrender to habit we surrender many of our vocal rights.” (p. 36) A bad habit should not be called “natural”. In that sense, practicing the floor work, breathing and humming aims to correct any controlling habits we might have in those aspects– and to instill good habits in us to aid in our vocal developments.

In week 4 the most significant activities that we’ve done were articulation and pronunciation. We started with facial stretches, and then worked through the consonants in a (123 123 123 1) manner, to warm up the articulators. After which, we had some tongue twisters and limericks. “a big black bug….”, “a jester from lester…”. The former one seemed to trip me more as there was more a mix of long and short vowels after the ‘b’ consonant or consonant cluster. I guess limericks are a really good way to warm up the articulators but I thought they weren’t “authentic” enough – because no one speaks in limericks or rhymes in real life – it would be deemed as too weird. Nonetheless, they serve as practice and warm ups if we want to refine our pronunciation and diction.

For this week we also prepared the tree-toad poem for a live reading in class. I thought I did rather okay but there was much to be improved in terms of pacing and natural rhythm. Perhaps the desire to sound as animated as possible shortchanged this aspect. There is a need to still conserve the natural rhythms of speech and, especially in this case, a rhyming tongue twister.

When I was being compared with Durga, someone said she was the better speaker because she sounded more pleasant. This got me thinking – many of the voices we hear on announcements/trains or customer service hotlines were female voices. In that sense, could a female voice be more “prized/valuable” in those fields, while less so in other circumstances. This got me thinking about the privileges different types of voices might have in different circumstances.

Overall for the articulation and pronunciation activity, I felt as if Claire had quite a prescriptive approach to teaching – many of the pronunciation patterns followed the RP/British accent. Prescriptivism as in how the word must/should sound. It isn’t necessarily bad – as the English accent is internationally recognizable and a good model to follow – especially when some of our Singlish pronunciation actually hinders understanding in native speakers. Therein lies another issue – we, as Singaporeans, are also native speakers of the English Language – it’s just that we speak another variety of English that might not be comprehended by all. Thus, I feel that the lesson here to be learnt is the ability to codeswitch – to speak the appropriate variety in different contexts. For myself, I codeswitch to a “higher” variety, i.e. an accent close to RP when I make formal speeches or give instructions in class. Other than those circumstance, I keep my speech in the more “informal” variety (Singapore English, Singlish) – such as when talking to friends or family.

The introduction of IPA was quite useful in trying to teach pronunciation. Armed with knowledge of the IPA symbols (shown in advanced learners’ dictionaries etc.), speakers are able to know their own pronunciation or practice pronunciation according to which variety of English they desire (American/British). Personally, I took a course on phonetics in NIE so I was rather familiar with the symbols. Even so, when I did the transcription of the “tree poem” without the help of the dictionary it helped me visualize the tendencies of how I pronounce certain words. For example, for words with the plural “s”, I tend to pronounce it as an ‘s’ instead of a ‘z’ regardless of whether a consonant or vowel comes before it (rightfully, if a vowel comes before it should be a z.)

Claire said something about having a standard pronunciation but having a neutral accent – which, at this point, I still am having problems grasping. I find that if I were to read a passage entirely made up of British IPA symbols, I would sound British! Or this could be habitual…. I will perhaps address this in the weeks to come..