IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC & VOICE IN CLASSROOM TEACHING.

IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC & VOICE IN CLASSROOM TEACHING.

 

Voice is a basic tool in communication between adults. In educational settings, teachers use their voices in different paralinguistic ways when they communicate with students. A teacher’s use of voice is important because it serves to communicate attitudes and emotions in classroom. When teachers take different roles in relation to children, they use their voice with different pitch, melody, and loudness. Various acoustic elements in teachers’ voices are associated with different teaching roles when explored from a child-sensitive perspective. Wise use of auditory elements such as pitch, melody, and loudness etc can increase the effectiveness of learning process. Following are the components of music and voice which affect learning process.

 

1.   VOLUME or LOUDENESS

When speaking naturally without any amplification, A teacher has to keep in mind that the distance to be covered by her voice. We can compare the act of speaking with the act of throwing a ball. More muscular effort is needed to throw the ball a long distance than to throw it in a shorter length. A teacher has to consider her words as balls and mentally watch them covering the space between her and the students. A teacher has to make her voice loud enough to be heard by students in the last row. Speaking to a large class with more students will require more energy and breathe control.

 

2.   CLARITY

Clarity of sound depends on speed or rate of the sound. Rate is how fast or slow a person speaks. A teacher can vary the rate depending on the emotions or the type of message you are communicating. If a person experiences joy, he will speak at a fast rate and if a person is experiencing sadness, he will speak in a lower rate. A teacher has to speak at a varied rate so that students have to emphasize important parts of the content. Teacher has to speak slower in the time of making choices and thinking carefully about what she says. A slower pace may convey thoughtfulness to the audience.

3.   PITCH

Pitch is the auditory attribute of sound ordered on a scale from low to high. Pitch is closely related to frequency of sound waves. Changing the pitch while speaking can convey shades of meaning such as emphasis or surprise, or distinguish a statement from a question. A teacher wants to find a pitch that is suitable for his class environment. Teachers use a pitch range that would normally be comfortable for the natural conversation in classroom. All languages use pitch pragmatically as intention to communicate different meanings such as to convey surprise or irony, or to pose a question. Consciously or unconsciously the teacher will use the different patterns of pitch to convey different meanings to the students. Teacher can use pitch to draw the student’s attention to words, phrases, or ideas that are more important than others.

4.   PAUSES

A teacher may use pauses to enhance the message delivery and also use filler words and pauses that distract from the boredom in classroom. Pauses can enhance delivery. A pause may refer to a rest, hesitation, or temporary stop to the speech. It is an interval of silence and may vary in length. Teacher may use a pause to emphasize that the information coming next is important, or to give the audience time to process what you have just said. Pause enables the teacher to gather thoughts before delivering the final appeal. Pause prepares the listener to receive your message. Also, Pause creates effective suspense and suspense can create interest. The audience will want to find out the conclusion or what happened if you pause before the punch line or conclusion. Pause after an important idea. Pause at the end of a unit or a content or main point. Unwanted pause in speech creates boredom to students.

5.   DICTION and RHYTHM

Diction of sound focuses on articulation and pronunciation. Humans are unique in our use of tongue, lips, and other movable parts of the speech mechanism. In articulating an idea, teacher varies the sound by movement of the teeth, tongue, and lips into recognizable patterns. Pronunciation   refers to the ability to use the correct stress, rhythm, and intonation of a word in a spoken language. A word may be spoken in different ways by various individuals or groups, depending on many factors such as area in which individuals grew up, the area in which individual live, whether the individual have a speech or voice disorder, ethnic group, socio-economic background, education etc. Teacher can listen to recordings of different people and check the pronunciation in online dictionaries which has an audio of the preferred pronunciations.

6.   DIALECT AND VOCAL VARIETY

Teacher may use many different English dialects to change the pitch, rate, volume, and use of pauses to achieve vocal variety. A dialect is a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language speakers. A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. The term dialect is applied most often to regional speech patterns. The major native dialects of English are often divided by linguists into three categories: British, North American, and Australasian. Likewise, every language has different dialects. It is important to consider whether the majority of the audience shares the same dialect as the speaker to make sure that the words and pronunciation match those of the audience. If you are speaking to students from different regions, a teacher make sure that the word choice and pronunciation is more widely used than that of a regional dialect community.

7.   VOCAL VARIETY

Vocalic, or paralanguage, refers to the non-verbal elements of speech used to modify meaning and convey emotion. You achieve vocal variety by using any or all of the features of vocalic: the rate, pitch, volume, and pauses you use to change the way you deliver your message. Here are methods to help you create variety in your delivery:

·         Speak faster or slower at different times.

·         Speak at a slightly higher or lower pitch.

·         Use more force to speak louder or softer.

·         Pause at different points in your speech.

The goal of classroom learning is to avoid monotony and unvarying tone that will create boredom in classroom and fails to communicate your message clearly.