https://courses.vccs.edu/colleges/brightpoint/courses/CST111-VoiceandDictionI

Effective: 2025-05-01

Course Description

Enables students to improve pronunciation, articulation, and voice quality. Includes applied phonetics. Part I of II.
Lecture 3 hours. Total 3 hours per week.
3 credits

The course outline below was developed as part of a statewide standardization process.

General Course Purpose

Enables students to improve pronunciation, articulation, and voice quality.

Course Objectives

  • General Learning Outcomes
    • Critical Thinking
      • Analyze their vocal barriers and positively address vocal issues
    • Professional Readiness
      • Compare and contrast vocal strategies as applied in different modalities and industries.
  • Course Outcomes
    • Stage Expression
      • Identify barriers to effective vocal stage expression for actors
    • Vocalics
      • Define elements of vocalics (e.g. articulation, rate, pitch, inflection, volume) aimed at producing intelligible speech for the stage
    • Vocal Technique
      • Develop a foundational vocal technique for maintaining vocal expression and/or resolving vocal expression problems throughout a stage career
    • Vocal projection and endurance
      • Release tension, connect breath, voice, and body at the level of sensory and emotional awareness and employ vocal projection and endurance
    • Vocal variety
      • Discover vocal variety in dramatic and non-dramatic texts
    • Professional Performance
      • Care for the voice as a professional performance tool and take responsibility for practicing vocal technique, beyond the classroom, to develop professional discipline

Major Topics to be Included

  • Breath and Voice:
    • Awareness and freedom of breath
    • Vocal anatomy/Diaphragmatic breathing
    • Channeling sound to increase vocal projection
    • Discovering resonators
  • Speech and Diction:
    • From voice to speech: Turning sound into language
    • Consonants and vowels
    • Diphthongs
  • Language and Text:
    • Linking language to text
    • Scoring a text
    • IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet/American Standard speech
  • Possible approaches:
    • Berry
    • Fitzmaurice
    • Lessac
    • Linklater
    • Rodenberg