Hi there!
My name is Sophie Franklin! Welcome to my second blog! I do
have a first one, it’s dedicated primarily to books but more recently I’ve
taken a more casual approach to it uploading poems and weekly thoughts! Here,
however, I shall be uploading to aid my university work! This will become apparent
as some posts will be simple assignments and some may be dairy recordings of
what happened to aid my memory towards the end of the year when deadlines are
approaching!
For the first week we were asked to record our voice and
analyse it. Before listening to my voice, I am aware that I mostly speak fast
pace, and at times I can have a slight stutter, this becomes more predominant
if I am excited or nervous in any way as I stumble over particularly the first
few words in my sentence. Having originally come from the South East in Kent, I
have been bought up with a typical ‘Queens English’ accent being told to pronounce
words correctly and use my ‘t’s etc which many people to this day even comment
on how posh I sound.
I wanted to make this analysis accurate so rather than
sitting in a room awkwardly recording my voice not knowing what on earth to say
and being consciously aware of how I am talking, I asked permission of someone
who I was on Skype to one evening to see if they wouldn’t mind me recording the
conversation for 20 minutes so I could analyse myself accurately and honestly. This
seemed to work well because a few minutes in I had actually forgotten I was
recording myself which towards the end of the recording, I actually commented on!
So here goes…
Just at the beginning of the recording I have already
noticed that I incorporate ‘um’ and ‘er’ into my speech when trying to explain
what it is I need to do, additionally I also use the word ‘oh’ and ‘like’ a lot
when explaining stories of what I have been up to. The first 2 may be linked
slightly to the minor stammer I have of not being able to process what I want
to say into saying it directly and fluently. As I was on Skype, I have noticed that
I have a relaxed tone of voice that whilst my voice is naturally high pitched
at times I did have a slightly lower tone of voice, being relaxed I also wasn’t
speaking fast pace as I thought I do. I have a typical ‘Queens English’ ‘posh’
accent but at times I skip my ‘t’s at the end of words.
This isn’t very often, but at times I have noticed that I also
like to elongate some of my vowels in the middle or at the end of words, on the
other hand I am very irregular with this because at other times I shorten my
vowels a lot and it sounds like I am between 2 accents. This may be because I had
a heavy influence from someone from Manchester over the past 2 years so I may
have some accentual aspects of the Manchurian accent in my voice.
My volume stayed the same throughout the recording more or
less, but taking into account the factors of at the time I had a cough and was
rather tired so I was able to keep control of my volume. It is important to
take those factors into account with having the result that they did because I have
noticed, particularly in the past year, people have made me aware that I sometimes
talk louder than is necessary for the time or place I am at.
I may revisit this post at a later date having analysed my
voice to a better standard from a different setting, perhaps with a group of
friends to see how I differentiate.
