Better speech; a text-book of speech training for secondary schools

Front matter

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Preface

The Aim and the Ideal

The movement for better speech is upon us. Leaders of civic activities, the press, school administrators, parents, teachers, even pupils, have come to an awakening as to the desirability of improving speech. It is with the sincere hope of contributing some new definiteness of meaning and direction to this nation-wide campaign for better speech that this book is written.

Speech as a school study is the broadest of all disciplines. It is fundamental and universal. In school, poor speech means poor mathematics, poor history, poor physics, poor chemistry, and, surely, poor language. Speech is the most liberal of all cultural studies, yet it is far and away the most practical discipline that the school can give. The profound conviction of the authors of this text is that the term Speech properly comprehends a wide field, including the simplest efforts to make meaningful sounds and actions, the proper choice and utterance of words, proper vocal expression in speaking and reading, proper control of the whole body in communicating with others, and the ability to think clearly and deeply. The development of these capacities carries with it the ability to influence the thoughts and actions of other people. Good speech is the key which admits its possessor to the company of the leaders of men. When speech is not good, man is vastly less happy as a social being than he should be. The man who has mastered speech has learned the secret of fitting himself into his complex social environment.

The time to master speech is youth, in the days when habits are being formed. Habits of good speech, once fixed upon iv PREFACE

boys and girls, will abide. The place for establishing correct habits is, first of all, the home, and after that, the school, especially the high school, the college of the people. When training in speech is added to the traditional training in language, literature, history, mathematics, and science, all these other disciplines are the beneficiaries in effectiveness and usefulness.

This book is planned throughout to enable teachers with the widest variety of training to present to their classes the underlying principles of good speech and to offer them profitable projects for training and practice. It furnishes a means of socializing the whole school program, giving point, clearness, and co-ordination to the work done throughout the school. Just as speech itself is the chief agency for socializing life, so the work of the speech class is the surest way of socializing the work of the school.

The Plan

The fundamental tenets of this book are: (1) Speech training to be effective should proceed according to principles and rules. (2) These principles must be evolved from careful observation of human behavior, that is, from the science of psychology. (3) Psychology shows us that speech is not instinctive, that it is learned just as all other habits are learned. (4) Most children learn their speech under unfavorable circumstances — at home, on the street, on the playground. (5) The only way in which this faulty training can be corrected by the school is through a study of what speech is aimed to accomplish, a knowledge of what its elements are, and through well-directed exercises in turning poor speech into better speech. (6) The ultimate object of training for better speech should be to give the pupil a knowledge of how to improve himself and a will to put this knowledge into practice; in other words, to make the pupil an intelligent self-

PREFACE v

critic. The text is devised to help the learner at any level of speech training. It provides principles and exercises designed to be helpful along the following lines:

1. Articulation and pronunciation.

2. Usage.

3. Thinking.

7. Acting.

8. Contests.

The Method

The book tries to tell a straight-away story on the theme, "The way to improve speech is to understand it and make a conscious effort to improve speech habits." Yet the logical order of this " story" does not necessarily indicate the best order for carrying on class instructions. Teachers should not feel bound to follow the order in which the chapters are written; the best way to use the book is to mark out a course for a given class, using such parts as serve the special needs and purposes of the particular situation.

The following is suggested as a workable four-year schedule: First Year: Chapter I, Good Speech; Chapter II, The Nature of Speech; Chapter VI, Thinking for Speech; Chapter III, Mastering the Whole Body for Speech. Second Year: Review Chapters I, II, III, and VI, adding Chapter IV, The Voice in Speech, and Chapter V, Using Language in Speech. Third Year: Review Chapters I, II, III, IV, V, VI, adding Chapter VII, Conversation, Chapter VIII, Public Speaking, Chapter IX, Reading. Fourth Year: Review Chapters VIII and IX, and apply them to the project work of debating and play production, using the materials of Appendices A and B and of Appendix C.

vi PREFACE

Acknowledgments

The thanks of the authors are due to the following named persons, who very kindly read the manuscript in whole or in part and offered most helpful criticism and advice : Professor James Milton O'Neill of the University of Wisconsin; Mr. Harry Hinds Wood of Madison, Wisconsin; Miss Severina E. Nelson and Mr. Giles W. Gray of the staff in Speech at the University of Illinois, and Miss Ethel Dyer, a senior student at the same institution . The list of plays and establishments dealing in stage accessories was prepared by Mr. Gray. Thanks also are due to Professor Sterling Andrus Leonard, Assistant Professor of the Teaching of English at the University of Wisconsin, for a careful and helpful reading of the proof.

All of the aforementioned, as well as the authors, were formerly teachers in secondary schools.

Charles Henry Woolbert.

Andrew Thomas Weaver. 1922

Contents

PAGE

Preface iii

I. Good Speech 1

Chapter I

Strange how careful people are about dress, how sure that dignity and good taste in dress help to make one's success in getting on in the world; and, at the same time, how careless these same people are about speech, which is the dress of the mind.

Literary Digest: Nov. 6, 1920.

Speech is a mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

Publius Syrus.

What were all the attributes of man, his personal accomplishments, and his boasted reason, without the faculty of speech! To excel in its use is the highest of human arts.

Bronson: Mental and Vocal Philosophy.

I. The Fundamental Nature of Speech.

A. Speech as a Means of Communication.

B. Forms of Communication.

II. Learning to Speak.

A. Speech Develops as a Means of Satisfying Wants.

B. Speech Begins as Random Activity.

C. Imitation in Learning.

D. Making and Interpreting Signs.

III. Speaker and Spoken to.

A. Speech is a Two-sided Activity.

B. The Fundamental Purpose of Speech,

IV. Importance of Good Speech.

A. Speech as Man's Greatest Invention.

B. Failure in Speech and Failure in Life.

V. Tests of Good Speaking.

A. Controlled by Definite Purpose.

B. Easily Seen and Heard.

C. Secures and Holds Attention.

VI. Sources of I mereslingness.

A. Evidence of Being Throughly Alive.

B. Using Strong Enough Tones of Voice.

C. Consulting Tastes of Those Spoken to.

1. Tastes determined by habits.

2. Tastes determined by degree of culture.

3. Tastes determined by circumstances and conditions.

D. Sympathy and Tact.

E. Variety of Voice and Action.

VII. Summary.

SPEECH

Speech is like a good many other things that we meet everyday ; we do not really understand its weaknesses or appreciate its merits. We treat it much as we treat the family, the school, the community — we merely take it for granted and assume that it is what it is, and that there is little use trying to change it. Human nature is so constituted that when we have lived with a thing or person for a long time, we get into the habit of making the best of a good or bad bargain and letting it go at that.

Yet education and civilization are both a kind of staircase by which we rise from the imperfect, the unsatisfactory, the weak, to the perfect, the satisfactory, and the effective. In no school subject more than in Speech Training, probably, is there so much truth in the old adage, "The good is often enemy to the better." And of course the ineffective is always, with all studies, the enemy to the good.

So it will pay us to look into this more or less mysterious thing we call Speech, find out how good or poor we are in using it, learn how it works, how to take it apart, and then how to put it together again. We shall discover some rather amazing things about ourselves. We shall be something like the man who was quite astounded to find that he had been using prose all his life; or maybe we shall feel like the novelist Thackeray, who professed to be quite amazed by the discovery that in France even the children spoke French!

The least studious and the most easily frightened and the most careless of boys and girls have been using Speech all their lives; they have had thousands of lessons in Speech — most of them good, but very, very many of them quite bad. Now we start afresh.

I. THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF SPEECH

A. Speech as a Means of Communication. We live in a world of people, of fellow human beings. To be happy and successful we have to learn how to get on with one another; in countless ways we are dependent upon those around us. We live happily and successfully just in proportion as we learn how to adjust our corners to theirs, to fit our hands in theirs, to go about our work and play with the least possible friction and obstruction. This means that we must know each other's thoughts, each other's feelings, each other 's desires, and that we must continually take these into account in our daily lives.

How do we do this? How can you and I each know what the other is thinking or feeling or desiring? There is no way of x-raying another person's mental operations. We never do find out directly; we always have to get the secret by roundabout ways; that is, you cannot actually think my thoughts and I cannot actually feel your feelings. Then what do we do? Why, we find them out indirectly. For be sure that we do " carry" thought and feelings to others, else we could not live or grow up or be successful in the struggle of life.

How do we do it? We read and interpret the outward signs.

When we can look at another person and know what he thinks or feels or wishes, we can better get along with him. When we hear him use his voice and make vocal sounds for us to interpret, then we can get on better still. The answer is, then, that we succeed in living with other people by making and interpreting signs. This is best summed up under the name, Communication.

The most important signs that we can see and hear in the behavior of others are those that we call speech. Everything you can see in the actions of another and everything you can hear in his voice may become a sign or signal of his meaning and thus be included in speech. Speech is communication, — it is a key which opens up our minds and hearts one to another. If a man lived in complete isolation from other living beings, he would never need any means of communication and would never learn to speak. He might express his ideas and feelings in some kind of actions and vocal sounds, but these actions and sounds would not be speech.

B. Forms of Communication. In order to understand more fully what speech really is, let us consider certain forms of communication and see how they work. What is the problem of communicating by telegraph? Merely this: to devise a code in terms of sound — dots and dashes — which can be sent over the wires. First both individuals doing the communicating agree on the code, then make the sounds, and finally learn to interpret or translate them into written words. In this way they can communicate over the wires. When A who is to send the message, and B who is to receive it, have agreed that — means " c-a-t," then A by

giving the right signals, can make B think of a small, furry animal which catches mice and which is more or less of a nuisance around his house. When the football team have learned their signals — a disguised form of speech — the quarter back communicates with the members of his team by calling off combinations of numbers to which definite meanings have been attached. If one person agrees with another that every time he bends his little finger he will be thinking "cat," they can communicate with each other in that way, and they will be using a form of speech. Have you ever seen a football team from a deaf and dumb school play a game? They make their signals with their fingers and arms. Yet they are using a form of speech. How many in the class know the boy-scout semaphore signals which make up one code for communication? Speech is the best way human beings have yet invented for communicating one with another. It is essentially a code; it is composed of audible signs made with the vocal muscles and of visible signs made with the other muscles of the body.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Define speech.

2. In what ways other than speech can people communicate with each other?

3. What likenesses and differences are there among the following: a telegraph message, a telephone conversation, a letter, and a public address?

4. How does the sort of speech used by the deaf and dumb differ from ordinary speech?

6. What advantage have the audible signals over the visible signals in speech? Vice versa?

6. How much communication through speech is possible between people who speak different languages?

7. Do animals speak? What is your own observation on this point? How many modes of communication among animals can you state?

8. Make up a simple set of original signals of some sort which might be used as a means of communication.

9. Say something to the class using the visible signals of speech without the audible signals; use sign language, pantomime.

10. Communicate meaning to someone, using your voice without words.

11. Tell us the story of the most interesting movie you ever saw and show us how the characters communicated with each other and with you.

II. LEARNING TO SPEAK

A. Speech Develops as a Means of Satisfying Wants. If a baby were perfectly satisfied all the time, if it had everything it wanted, it would never learn to speak. Sometimes when a baby makes a noise like "a goo," its mother says, "Yes, I'll get you some 'a goo/" and gives the baby a drink. Or when the baby squirms about enough, the mother, reading a signal in this, immediately feeds it, or moves it, or gives it a rattle to play with. Such a child is deprived of any real incentive to develop speech. Why should it learn to speak? Nobody will learn the complicated code of speech if he can get along as well without it. Most of us have never learned the wireless code; why should we learn it? It would be of no service to us in our daily lives.

B. Speech Begins as Random Activity. But most babies are not comfortable and satisfied all the time. When they are not comfortable, they wriggle and twist and utter sounds. These sounds and activities at first happen accidentally; but when the mother learns to interpret them as signals of specific wants, they tend to be repeated when the same want arises again. When the mother learns to respond to the right sort of wriggling and vocal sound and then insists upon that only, the baby learns a good set of basic speech habits.

C. Imitation in Learning to Speak. From this point on, the child 's problem in learning speech consists almost wholly in imitating others; that is, in learning a code that other people use, probably one of the codes that have been growing and developing all through the countless ages which man has spent on the earth.

D. Making and Interpreting Signs. Learning to speak means learning to make and to understand signs that can be seen and signs that can be heard. We all learn to show what we think and feel by the way we look, and from the looks of others we learn to draw conclusions as to their thoughts and feelings. Human beings act in certain ways when they are happy, and in other ways when thejr are dejected. " Seeing is believing;" so is hearing. " Actions speak louder than words" is still very true. But words uttered by the voice are also powerful. So when we both see and hear, we just about know what is going on in another's mind.

Learning to speak involves the developing of control over our entire behavior, so that through it we may be able to tell people what we want to tell them and cause them to do what we want them to do. The great problem in learning to speak is to control the whole body in such a way as to say one thing at one time, and one thing only.

QUESTIONS

1. Why and how does a normal child learn to speak?

2. Describe the speech of a child you know who is backward in learning to talk. Illustrate.

3. Why is a child born deaf also mute?

III. SPEAKER AND SPOKEN TO

A. Speech Is a Two-sided Activity. Speaking always involves at least two persons, one speaking and one spoken to. We may not say speaker and listener because one spoken to is more than a listener; he is also a watcher, an observer. Now if you were to go to the telephone and talk without first calling anyone up, people would think you were pretty queer. Likewise in speaking, the first thing is to see that the line of communication between you and the one to whom you speak is open and working. Some people actually speak in conversation and even from the public platform without calling anyone up. You always speak with someone.

B. The Fundamental Purpose of Speech. The " speaker " who merely meditates out loud, seldom accomplishes anything except to relieve his own feeling or to clear up his own notions. Real speech comes from a definite urge to make another person act in some definite way. As Frobisher well says: "The chief end of speech is to conform the mind of the hearer."*

QUESTIONS

1. Is the term "audience" satisfactory as descriptive of persons spoken to?

2. Do we need a new word to describe the "audience" at a moving picture show? Some one has suggested "optience"; what do you think about it?

3. How can a speaker know whether his "lines of communication" are open and working, or not? What should he do when he finds he has lost his "connection"?

IV. IMPORTANCE OF GOOD SPEECH

A. Speech as Man's Greatest Invention. It has been

said that speech is man's greatest invention; it is; it has done more than all other inventions put together to advance civilization. It is responsible for most other inventions. More people fail to live well and happily from inability to get along with others, than from any other reason. It is not so much a lack of brains that wrecks most lives, but just plain inability to "get on" with other folks and to adapt oneself to conditions and circumstances as they actually are. The greatest and most useful instrument that man has yet devised for establishing and maintaining satisfactory and happy relations with others is speech.

In this book we are interested in every variety of speech

from ordinary conversation to formal public address. We

are even more interested in speaking well in everyday life

than in clever performances on the platform. While artistic

* Acting and Oratory, p. 59.

skill is very fine, yet efficiency in everyday speaking is much more valuable in the long run. No man can hope to get out of life what he should get unless he develops his ability to speak correctly and effectively.

B. Failure in Speech Means Failure in Life. The old proverb, "Speech is silvern, silence is golden," does not apply to the man who, called on to say something where speech means responsibility met and opportunity grasped, is silent and tongue-tied because he cannot speak. Not at all; for there will be many times in your lives when you must speak if you are going to amount to anything in the world. It is an admirable thing to be silent because you see that silence is more appropriate than speech and more likely to secure for you what you want. It is a very different thing to be face to face with a real chance to amount to something and then have to give it up because you do not know how to tell others what you want to tell them. In a very real sense, speech is the key which opens the door of true success. You are bound to be judged by your speech whether you wish to be or not. The question for you to decide is not whether you are going to speak or keep silent — you cannot avoid speaking. The only question is, how are you going to speak, well or ill?

QUESTIONS

1. What are some of the things that the invention and development of speech has done for human society?

2. Just how does poor speech hamper a man in getting along with others? Illustrate.

V. TESTS OF GOOD SPEAKING

What kind of speech is really good? When is speaking effective and when ineffective? What manner of speech makes for success and what for failure? What tests shall we apply?

Let us remember that all speech has for its fundamental object the influencing of someone at the "receiving end" of the process, — the one who looks and listens. In general terms, therefore, we may answer that speech is effective when it causes the hearer and observer to do what the speaker wishes him to do. The speaker who can induce those to whom he speaks to do what he wants them to do in the shortest time and with the least effort for everybody concerned is the best speaker. Good speaking will generally meet the following tests :

1. It is controlled by a definite purpose in the mind of the speaker.

2. It is at all times plainly visible and clearly audible.

3. It is interesting enough to secure and hold the attention of the observers and listeners.

A. First Test of Good Speaking. It is controlled by a definite purpose in the mind of the speaker.

No one can speak effectively unless he has settled in his own mind just what his object in speaking is. You have no business to talk until you have asked yourself the question: " Just what do I want the person or persons to whom I speak to understand, feel, believe, or do?" If you are tempted to utter sounds and make motions for the vague pleasure you get out of the exercise, go off by yourself in the woods where you will not bother anybody else and perform to your heart 's content. You will not really be speaking, though — unless you play a double part and speak to yourself!

Too many conversers and public speakers are like the flies that buzz aimlessly about the window screen with a hazy purpose of getting into the house; after a lot of waste effort they sometimes come upon a broken strand in the wire and so accidentally accomplish their purpose. The thing that makes so effective one of those giant guns that can hurl a ton-and-a-half shell thirty miles is not so much the size of the projectile, or the noise it makes, or the smoke that pours out of the muzzle, as it is the terrible precision with which it can be aimed. Someone has wisely remarked that the reason so many speakers hit nothing is that they aim at it so carefully.

Don't make the mistake of speaking when you really have nothing to say. "Something to say" means wanting to tell somebody something. What would you think of a man who packed his grip, went to the railway station, took the first train that came along, and rode until the conductor put him off? Yet that is no more foolish than to speak without a purpose — with nothing to say. In fact it is not quite so bad, for the aimless traveler would not be using up the time of other people without paying them for it as does the aimless speaker. The source of all the really effective conversation and public speaking which you may see and hear from day to day all about you is in a purpose to influence someone in a specific fashion. You may verify what has just been said by studying the speaking of those about you. Notice how thoroughly all effective talking is dominated and controlled by the desire to communicate something definite to others. Decide first of all just where you are going to head for before you get all dressed up to go.

If you are telling someone how to get from one city to another by automobile, your purpose is to give the most specific and helpful directions possible. Your purpose is to get the ones to whom you speak to see the situation, to understand the relations, etc. You will be effective exactly in proportion to the clearness of their understanding when you have finished and inversely to the time and the effort involved in making and understanding the explanation.

If you were telling someone about the best time you ever had, your purpose would be to give him all the enjoyment possible. The measure of your success would be the actual amount of pleasure he got.

If you were telling someone why you failed to do what was expected of you, your purpose would probably be to convince him that you were right in your course of action. You succeed in proportion to the fullness with which he believes what you want him to believe.

If, again, you are telling someone about a magazine for which you are soliciting subscriptions, your purpose is to get his name on the dotted line; and the measure of your success is whether or not you get his signature and his money.

Notice that in every case your purpose is to be accomplished in the minds of those to whom you speak, not in your own mind. You are shooting at the other fellow, not at yourself. The first requisite for successful speaking is, therefore, that the speaker make up his mind clearly as to just what he wants the person whom he addresses to do about the matter which he presents.

B. Second Test of Good Speaking. It is easily seen and heard.

Good speaking should at all times be plainly visible and clearly audible. This means that the speaker should be both seen and heard without strain to the eyes and ears of those he addresses. Some of you as children have learned the little jingle which says:

Children's speech should always be Clear to hear and plain to see.

In these lines the whole truth is pretty well summed up.

But we need to examine the matter a bit more carefully in deciding just what they mean. Sometimes when a child has " spoken a piece" in public, he gets the idea that he has done the thing just right because his fond relatives in the rear of the hall, as well as those on the front seats, have u heard every word." While this does not at all mean that he has been worth hearing and seeing, still it is true that to be seen easily and heard distinctly comes ahead of everything else in speech. Your chance of getting something you want from a person through speech is pretty small if he has difficulty in making out the speech signs that you are making.

You have all talked over the telephone when only about half of what you said reached the person at the other end of the wire, and maybe less than half of what he said reached you. You know how satisfactory that kind of conversation is ! The worst of it is that you cannot see the person with whom you are trying to talk. If you could only get the signals which he is making with the muscles of his face and hands, you could do pretty well at piecing out the fragmentary signs that you get from his voice. Yet some speakers in conversation and on the platform use such small voices and such indefinite movements that we find it very difficult to get their signals; and therefore we never can hope to fathom their meanings.

During the war we heard a good deal about " low visibility." Ships at night or in a fog or camouflaged are hard to see — their visibility is low — a great advantage when a ship is trying to pass through dangerous waters unnoticed. But if the men on such ships are trying to wig-wag signals of distress to a passing vessel, "low visibility" is a great detriment. A Maxim silencer may be an addition to the effectiveness of a gun by making it hard to locate; but if a man who is lost in a forest or on a mountain is dependent upon the firing of the gun to communicate with friends miles away, what good will a silencer do him?