Air is the messenger of the spoken word. Air carries everything you say to one set of ears—or to many. But the airborne journey of the spoken word doesn’t start outside your lips. It starts deep inside you—as air leaves your lungs, passes through your vocal chords, and grabs hold of what you say before heading out your mouth for the ears ahead.
By picturing speech in this way, we see that we need to breathe right to speak right. Many stage actors, public speakers, and voice-over professionals take advantage of this insight. But others don’t give breathing much thought. Having done it every hour of every day of their lives, these people take breathing for granted. And they never imagine that they might be doing it wrong.
To speak well you need to breathe well—and that means doing what you did instinctively the day you were born. To practice, lie down on your back and relax. Let your stomach rise and fall as your diaphragm pulls air into you.
Finally, remember that speaking with deep, full breaths is not the same as shouting. Stage actors don’t shout when they perform a play. Public speakers don’t shout when they give a speech. And voice-over professionals don’t shout when they record in front of a microphone. The goal isn’t volume; the goal is resonance. If a weak and shallow chest breath grabs hold of your words, then your words will sound weak and shallow. If a strong and deep full-body breath grabs hold of your words, then your words will resonate inside every ear that hears them.
Pronúncia
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Note from the author: I am going to continue my series on tongue-twisters next week. This article is a “sneak peak” at an article I have written for Speak Up this month. You can read and hear the full article in issue 266 of Speak Up, which reaches newsstands this week.
23 comentários
gostei da estrutura do site.
vou linkar
abs
Hi, very interesting…
Isn’t the title missing a letter? Breathing.
Erro de digitação no Tópico, não?
Nao seria “breathing”?!
Pessoal,
Obrigado pelo aviso. Estava mesmo faltando uma letra no título do tópico.
Abraço,
Thanks, Jason, for such a nice article. My issue of Speak Up has already arrived and I’m looking forward to reading the whole thing. All the best. João
Muito bom o texto!
O único problema ee que vejo pelo meu iPhone e com ele não consigo ou ouvir a pronunia do texto, mesmo entrando no site como diz no email.. Algum suggestao?
Hi, very interesting…
Gran site…luv so much!!!
It’s the kind of thing that we really need know and practice
I am sure it will help me!!!!
Seria uma boa poder fazer download do audio. Belo post! 0/
Great article, Mr. Josan, really ‘breathtaking’ (arrebatador!) And if you don’t mind about mistakes from students, let me play here to memorize of some others words from breathing. I’ve already thought about the importance of breath for singing or for singers, but not for speakers. The human history doesn’t have good examples about these ones, mainly between politicians and religious men — who are always ‘breathless’ (ofegantes) as speaking but never get ‘out of breath’ (sem fôlego). If you stay close by one of them, when he’s speaking out loud, you will smell of the ‘bad breath’ (mau hálito) comes out from his mouth…
Learning to breathe in (inspirar) and to breathe out (expirar) at first in silence, is the best thing, I think, actually as you wrote, Josan. Thanks.
This blog is very interesting and very nice to improve may english.I`ll try to access more times.
the text is very important and interesting…I think that everybody should to breath the English language…..rsrsrs. Tks a lot….
very inspiring and enriching.
very good, I will seek more texts like this.
Conheci este site através de um amigo. Gostei muito. Fiquei muito impressionado com a modernidade e qualidade que nele há. Parabéns a todos os desenvolvedores e colaboradores. Vou divulgar!!!
Breathing plays a major role in speaking and in speaking correctly.
We don’t learn ‘voice health’ in college and that is why so many teachers (and other people who work with their voices) get sore throats and are hoarse so often.
Não consegui entender as seguintes estruturas: “weak and shallow chest breath”, “grabs hold of…” e “deep full-body breath”. Se alguém puder me ajudar.
Wonderfull text that contents a lot of teatching. I think we can at the same time learn about breating, even learn about pronounce and resonance.
Intao pessoal.ja faz 8 meses q eu estudo atravez desse site, eu peguei todas as dicas dele estudo ”sempre’ 2 hrs por dia assistindo a filmes…eu assisto o mesmo filme pelo menos 3 vezes dai eu axei q estava preparado intao eu fui pr um lugar muito badalado por gringo aq em manaus e uma garota chama ashley veio me comprementar…eu nem podia acreditar naquilo,eub fiquei cerca d meia hr conversando com ela!!! Eu posso dizer q eu intendi 95% dq ela estava falando””ou seja eu me senti realizado(Pessoal naw desista ,olha pr mim eu so sabia o basico-do-basico e agora tenho a capacidade de conversar quase q normalmente)
DICA: ASSISTA BASTANTE FILMES,primeiro com a legenda em portugues depois em ingles e depois o filme sem legenda e tente intender ao maximo as palavras q vc ja conhece!
é isso ai ta deixado meu recado!
AH,Naw posso esquecerr d agradecer ao Alessandro por ser um dos idealizadores do0 site Brigadao^^
Bruno,
Fico muito feliz que você esteja alcançando seus objetivos. Desejo muito sucesso!
Abraço,
amei o site e otima essina bastante aprendi muito oque eu não sabia e oque eu ja sabia
agora ja sei fala ingles obrigado ao criador do site
Hi, I just loved it.
I have the first Speak up magazine and sometimes I use to listen to the tapes, but now they have in Cd, that is much better.
In any case, I like it very much and I’m happy that we have Jason Bermingham with us.
Kisses