Develop a statement of purpose and a design plan for an oral presentation of your choosing—but plan for a situation in which you present in the dark such that your listeners cannot hear you. How does this change how you think about your tone of voice and range of emotions?
One of the nice things about websites is that they make room for the recorded voice so that we can hear intonations and voices—but how do people manage to convey voice and tone through more conventional word-based computer media like email and blogs? Can you “listen to” email and blogs? Is voice an important aspect of these media?
Take a text (or part of a text) you have written for this class, read it aloud, and record it using any technology to which you have access. Try to read it as though you are picking it up for the first time. Then vary how you read it in order to bring out different possible meanings (read it more intensely, for example, or emphasize different words and phrases). Then try to read it through different emotions, making it sound neutral, or angry, or blissful, or surprised, and so on. Listen to the recording, and write a short, informal reflection on what you might do in oral presentations in the future.
Just for fun: Let them sing it for you. Can you compose a whole oral presentation with this cheerily distracting toy?
