Part Two also includes several sections on how to make the most of your voice and use it better. In these you’ll learn how to:

• Prepare your voice for the day.
• Speak slower when necessary, so your listeners can always understand you.
• Be heard better.
• Give better presentations.
• Speak in challenging environments.
• Understand vocal fatigue, and measure how Better Voice reduces and then avoids it.

Here’s an extract from the section on speaking slower:

Make a start: speaking slower

To make the most of your voice and your presence, you’re going to need to talk slower sometimes, especially at work.

Take a tip from powerful people, such as world leaders, you see on TV. They very often speak more slowly than others. Why? Because they expect everyone to take notice and listen, so don’t need to rush what they’re saying. Why not expect people to listen to you? 

Speaking slower also gives your listeners time to hear and understand what you’re saying, and gives you time to make your voice interesting.

The trick is this:

To speak slower, concentrate on making all the vowels last longer.

(So, you can use the vowels to both slow you down and put music in your voice.)

One of the most powerful speeches ever delivered was Martin Luther King’s 1963 ‘I have a dream’. This extract (5 minutes) shows how he used pace, long vowels and pauses to hook his audience into his message:

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