Vocal Impression

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About You

Please answer the following survey. If you answer yes to 3 or more of the following 10 questions, you may want to consider setting up a free 1/2 hour preliminary consultation with one of our coaches.

Question 1 *

Do you worry that your voice lacks authority thus affecting your credibility?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Question 2 *

Does your job require you to use your voice to be persuasive and convincing?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Question 3 *

Do you find that public speaking makes you nervous?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Question 4 *

Do you worry that your accent or diction makes it hard for people to understand you?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Question 5 *

Do people ever make negative comments on the sound or quality of your voice?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Question 6 *

Do you like the sound of your own voice?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Question 7 *

Have you participated in any type of voice coaching or singing lessons?

Your Answer

Yes
No

Question 8 *

Do you use "umm", "ahh", "so" or "yeah" when you are stuck in thought while speaking to others?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Question 9 *

Do people ever tell you that you speak too quickly or too slowly?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Question 10 *

Would you be interested in mastering Vocal Impression's "9P's of Performance"?

Your Answer *

Yes
No

Your Education *

Which of the options below, reflect your level of education?

Your Answer *

Graduate Degree
Master's Degree
Bachelor's Degree
College Diploma
High School Diploma
None of the Above

Final Question *

How did you hear about Vocal Impression or the 9P’s of Performance?

Your Answer *

Facebook
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Work Colleague
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Comment

THE INFLUENCE OF PARALANGUAGE

“Paralanguage is a set of nonverbal “packaging” factors that contributes to or reduces a person’s credibility. Verbal messages such as “I am confident that…” are persuasive. Paralinguistic factors include dynamics such as volume, rate, pitch and pronunciation that have a strong effect on the receiver. The communicator’s voice is a major determiner of the receiver’s first and final impression.

Volume represents more than a level of sound. A person with a weak voice is usually perceived as lacking confidence, which lowers credibility. A strong voice, on the other hand, shows great confidence.

The rate at which someone speaks is vital to understanding a message and to the credibility of the communicator. If a person speaks too slowly, the audience will likely lose interest, and the speaker’s credibility will drop. Speaking too quickly may make a voice unintelligible, leading also to lower credibility. A speaker should, therefore, use a rate that is fast enough to keep the audience interested and show confident knowledge of the subject. But the rate should be intelligible to the audience and slow enough not to reveal nervousness.

The pitch of a communicator’s voice usually varies, depending on the subject. During a conversation, pitch almost always changes if the subject changes from, say, a sports event to abortion. Changes in pitch are expected by receivers and make a communicator more colourful and dynamic. A monotonous pitch throughout a conversation will be perceived as neither competent nor dynamic.

Pronunciation is vital to credibility because pronunciation is probably the most obvious dynamic feature of a voice. A speaker with poor pronunciation is perceived to be lower in competence, trustworthiness and dynamism than a speaker with good pronunciation.

If the qualities mentioned above are used while communicating, the communicator will have a “confident voice.” In a recent study, texts were read with confident and doubtful voices to observers. As expected, the speakers with confident voices were rated more credible. Also, a speaker with a doubtful text and confident voice was more credible than a speaker with a confident text and a doubtful voice. This finding shows how important the dynamics of a communicator are to perception by the audience.”

James P.T. Fatt