Communications Tools

1. Projection
2. Diction
3. Body Control
4. Body Movement
5. Eye Contact
6. Learning lines

1. Projection

Projection of voice is accomplished by use of the diaphragm. Students should keep

their posture straight, take a deep breath, and let it out slowly as they speak.
Encourage them to project their voice in your direction without lifting their shoulders,
tilting their heads, or shouting out. When working on voice projection start small.
Voice projection for a classroom can be practiced in a similarly-sized space, such as a
living room or kitchen. This will give students a sense of how loud they /he should be
if they were to role play in front of a camera in his classroom. Tape recording students
reading their lines will help show them what you are listening to in their voices. This
also works well to demonstrate growth and personal progress.

Exercise: Take turns delivering lines walking away from each other in order to
project the voice.

2. Diction
Diction: Choice of words especially with regard to correctness, clearness, or
effectiveness. Vocal expression characterized by clear enunciation and pronunciation
of words.

Exercise: Take turns delivering lines with a pencil in your mouth in order to create an
impediment in the way we talk, later practice the same line without the pencil and you
will hear a difference.

3. Body Control
This includes basic fitness, flexibility, physical awareness, lack of negative inhibitions
and coordination to perform in front of an audience. Students need to be aware of
their Idiosyncrasies and avoid making unconscious movements that can distract the
attention.
A gesture is a natural movement of any part of the body that conveys a thought
or emotion or reinforces oral expression. Gestures will depend to a large extent on
whether a person’s personality is vigorous and dynamic or calm and easygoing.
Exercise: Pantomime a complicated or humorous movement as you describe it.

4. Body movement
Body movement is an important part of successful communication; it reinforces,
emphasizes, and clarifies verbally expressed ideas. Because body movement is so
easily adaptable for communicating, skilled pantomimic actors can tell complicated
stones involving many characters through physical movement alone. However,
actions while instructing must reinforce rather than contradict the words. Students
should make sure the image they present and their body movements strengthen their
communication.

Exercise: Take turns delivering lines and time your movements with your lines.

5. Eye contact
Eye contact is the event when two people look at each other’s eyes at the same time. It
is a form of nonverbal communication, and can be an intense or emotional occurrence
or a soon-forgotten event. Eye contact is a large influence on social behaviour, but it
means dramatically different things at different times and in different situations.

Exercise:
1. Tell students to sit back to back and talk about their first day at the Colombo.
2. Tell students to sit knee to knee looking at each others knees as they talk about the
worst day of their life.
3. Tell students to look at each others eyes as they talk about their first kiss.

6. Learning Lines
Tips
1. Highlight important parts of the conversation models.
2. Break up your lines
3. Use gestures while trying to memorize your lines. The movements will help you
remember what to say and when to say it.
4. Run lines together.

Breaking up lines
The first thing to do to rehearse the conversation models is to divide the lines.
There are two types of pauses.
· Logical pauses: lines without the logical pause are not understandable (punctuation).
· Psychological pauses: added pause to create expectation or help us react inside
ourselves.

Exercise: Break up lines from a conversation model. Take turns delivering lines
making logical pauses and psychological pauses in order to give different feeling to the
lines.