Watch your Tone

While reading the Hicks chapter for this week’s class, I couldn’t help thinking of the saying, “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.” My husband is quite familiar with it after almost fifteen years of marriage. Most people think of that saying in the context of relationships, but it is just as applicable to the language arts classroom.

My creative writing class is in the midst of a poetry unit. Throughout this unit, they’ve watched videos or listened to poets reading their work as mentor texts. I’ve modeled how poetry should be read, as well – slowly, deliberately accenting/punching certain words, and adjusting volume and pacing to define tone. Still, when some students read a poem, they race through it blindly and the audience misses the opportunity to glean meaning.

The Hicks chapter sparked an idea that I will implement in my class this week. Hicks suggests that students value the process of recording and re-recording their voices, although I would argue that most students won’t like the sound of their voices at first. In my experience, hearing one’s voice on a device is a jarring experience. Or maybe it’s just me, as I think I sound like Fargo’s version of Fran Drescher.  Anyway, Hicks suggests that by “inviting students to record and listen to their own voice can also open up conversations about dialect, multilingualism, and the denotations and connotations of particular words and phrases (p. 103). When students read a poem to the class, they’re probably not hearing what I’m hearing. A million things could be racing through their heads, such as self-consciousness at reading out loud to the class, insecurity about how well they’re performing, or even preoccupation with whatever might seem more important than being in the moment with their poem.  I want them to hear what I hear, so I plan to give them this homework assignment: 

Choose one of the poems from your portfolio and record yourself reading it. Listen to the recording and answer the following questions:

1. Write about the pace in which you read your poem. What did you notice about the pacing? Where in the poem could you adjust the speed for emphasis or to set mood or tone?

2. What did you notice about the pitch of your voice? Could you use a higher or lower sound for emphasis in certain places? What is the intonation like?

3. How about your enunciation? Do you need to over-exaggerate or “punch” the words in specific places for emphasis?

4. Does your oral delivery of the tone match the tone you meant to convey in your writing? Why or why not?

5. Taking into consideration the answers to these questions, re-record your poem and listen to it again. How has it changed?

Hopefully, by completing this activity students will discover the strengths and weaknesses of their delivery for themselves, creating meta-awareness as to the power they carry with their voice. As a mentor text, I will show this youTube video featuring Taylor Mali who performs his poem “Speak with Conviction,” which uses humor to address the importance of what we say and how we say it.