1.

REFLECTION ON THE STORYTELLING SESSION

For the storyteller, voice is the main professional tool, the primary mode of communication.
Even if we are using other aids such as books, puppets, or toys, the voice is still the main
instrument to communicate the therapeutic message and, thus, to bring about the therapeutic
change through the story. In this musical-like type of story of Were going on a Bear Hunt! I
already know something about using my voice. When Goldilocks wanders into the home of the
Three Bears and says, I am so hungry, you probably used a high, gentle, childlike voice. When
the Three Bears get home and Papa Bear asks, Who has been eating my porridge? I may
have adopted a deeper, louder, masculine, even growl-like sound. When Mama Bear asks,
Who has been sitting in my chair? your voice was probably medium-sized, feminine, and
maternal. When Baby Bear asks, Who has been sleeping in my bed? and then declares, And
she is still there! your voice is likely to have been high-pitched, squeaky, infant-like, and maybe
even excited with the last discovery. Alliteration ia also used a lot in the story. The repetition of
the beginning consonant sounds happens on nearly most of the story. For example: swishy,
swashy grass, splish, splosh through the river, squelch, squerch through the mud. Effective
Storytelling Performance Skills

When telling a story, an effective storyteller demonstrates the following traits

observable by others:
Voice Mechanics
Speaks with an appropriate volume for the audience to hear. Employs
clear enunciation. Uses non-monotonous, vocal expression to clarify the
meaning of the text.
Face/Body/Gesture
Expressively uses non-verbal communication to clarify the meaning of
the text.
Focus
Concentration is clear.
Eye contact with audience is engaging.
Maintains a charismatic presence in space (stage presence).
Characterization
If dialogue is employed, characters are believable to listener. Storyteller's
natural voice is differentiated from character voices.
Use of Space:
Storyteller seems comfortable, relaxed and confident in front of listeners.
Storyteller maintains clear spatial relationships for characters and
narrator.
Pacing:

The story is presented efficiently and keeps listeners' interest throughout.

Performance skills.
Remember to...

vary the volume, pitch and tempo of your voice (enunciate clearly and exaggerate expression)
use your face, body and gestures (let your body speak)
make your body and face respond to the tale
have a clear focus and maintain concentration
maintain engaging eye contact with the audience/ individual listeners
create a charismatic presence (make the audience believe in you)
use different, exaggerated character voices
use your space/ be dynamic
remember to pace yourself
always remember to regain your style as a narrator
use silence and pauses to add dramatic effect

There are six guidelines for the storytellers voice. The use of the following
guidelines may help enhance that effectiveness, but, do not get caught up in the
techniques. If we are involved in the story, then it is likely that we will be spontaneously
using these guidelines. They merely offer as pointers that may enhance that process.
The first guideline is selecting our style of storytelling. There are some examples
of how voice adapts to the style of the story. First, if the content of the story is a cognitive
activity such as thinking through a problem, your voice may model the thoughtful,
ponderous nature of the story, being slow, considered, and deliberate. If you are telling a
story of physical activity such as in running a race, your voice style may include the
energy, the breathlessness, and the activity of participating in the race. Second, style
can be influenced by the emotions the story seeks to communicate, as it does
spontaneously our voice sounds different when we are angry, sad, anxious, excited, or
relaxed. Have you had the experience of answering the phone with a simple Hello
when feeling tired, sad or in grief and had the caller, who knows you reasonably well,
respond with a concerned enquiry, Are you okay? He or she has heard the emotion in
just a single word, heard a story in your affective expression. If you are telling a child a
story that begins with the problem of fear, your speech may be rapid, your breathing
shallower, and the tone of your voice higher; but as you model the resources of
relaxation, your speech can be slower, your respiration more comfortable, and your tone
a little lower. Reaching the desired outcome, your style of speech may parallel the joy of
achievement, expressed in a lighter, happier tone of voice.
Third, have you noticed how you speak differently to your lover than to your boss,
to one gender than to the other, to a child than to an adult? How you use different voices

for the different characters in Goldilocks and the Three Bears? We need to look at how
we adapt the style of our storytelling to the storys characters as well as to the listener to
whom the tale is addressed. Your style of storytelling may be different if the listener is a
2-year-old or a 12-year-old, a girl or a boy, or someone with different cultural or religious
values from your own. The bottom line here is to ensure our voice is appropriate to the
context, emotion, characters, outcome, and listener of the story.
The second guideline is the choice of our rate of utterance. What happens to the
rate at which you observe children speak when they have something exciting to tell you?
How does that rate of utterance alter when they are reluctantly confessing to having just
flat? Observe your own styles of communication. Do you talk differently to an adult or
child, a boy or a girl, a teenager or a young kid? Look at using those differences in your
storytelling styles to match both the child and the content of the story you wish to
communicate broken your favorite piece of crystal-ware? The content of communication,
and the emotion that accompanies that content, naturally influences our rate of speech.
How quickly you speak if a child is about to step onto a busy road is likely to be different
from the rate at which you tell that same child a soporific bedtime story. Observing and
understanding those differences in others, and ourselves, is helpful information to have
when adapting your rate of utterance to match the content of the story you might be
telling. If you are telling a child a metaphor to enhance relaxation, induce clinical
hypnosis, or facilitate guided imagery, the rate of utterance is most likely to be effective if
it begins by pacing the childs level of arousal, then gradually leads into slower and more
tranquil experiences. If you are telling an exciting, engaging tale, your rate of utterance
would better reflect the pace of enthusiastic arousal. This is simply a matter of adjusting
the speed at which you speak to the content and emotion of your story. While telling of
the three little pigs running from the big bad wolf, your speed of speech may reflect
hurried little trotters fleeing from one house to the next. Once safely inside with the door
bolted behind them, the rate can become more relaxed, more relieved.
The third guideline is the modulation of our intonation. There is a story of a
professor of English who wrote a sentence on the board and asked his students to
punctuate it correctly. The sentence he wrote on the board was, Woman without her
man is nothing. When he came to collect the assignment at the end of class, all the men
had written, Woman, without her man, is nothing. Checking the womens work, he
found they had written Woman! Without her, man is nothing. I use punctuation as an
example here because it is easier to illustrate in the written format of this book, and

because, like the intonation of sounds, punctuation adds and diminishes emphasis, at
times altering meaning and communicating very different messages.
Intonation refers to the emphasis and tone of voice placed on a word or letter. Intonation
distinguishes a statement from a question. It may be used to put accent or weight on a
particular word. It can, as seen in the example above, cause the same words to give two
totally different meanings. This adjustment or variation of tone is perhaps more common
in languages other than English. English does not have the same subtlety of intonation
as languages like Chinese or Vietnamese, but, nonetheless, we do modulate language
to alter the amplitude of our speech, its frequency, or its tone, thus putting greater
emphasis or meaning on an expression. Using intonations, thoughtfully, can enhance the
effectiveness of our communication.
The fourth guideline is adjusting the volume of our voice. Voice has a
volume control just like your television, home stereo system, or car radio. We turn the
volume up and down depending on the circumstances and the messages we want to
communicate. It is a useful exercise to observe how children use their voices
spontaneously and then consider how those volume adjustments can be utilized
effectively to express your story. Children often whisper when sharing a secret, shout
when cheering for a sports team, speak in hushed tones when confessing guilt, raise
their voices when angry, and sound flat when sad. For adults, while there may be
cultural differences, speaking in soft tones to a lover implies a message of intimacy, a
bonding of two souls, and loud shouting is commonly seen as an expression of anger. A
raised voice, generally, is something people find uncomfortable and want to avoid, yet
communicating quietly tends to trigger a listeners acuityunless the volume is so low
that the listener has difficulty tuning in. As well as observing childrens adjustment of
volume, notice how you tune in to or switch off the volume of voice of other people in
your life. Listen, too, to the way the volume of your voice communicates the message of
your story. How is it affecting your child listeners? Are they craning to hear, or backing
away? Is it facilitating an appropriate listening response from the child?
The fifth guideline is incorporating affective involvement of the story. If
you have the opportunity, observe how an infant reacts to a smiling face and a frowning
face, perhaps with a game of peek-a-boo. Developmentally, children express and relate
to affect long before they discriminate the sounds and meanings of words. Incorporating
appropriate emotion into stories for children taps into a natural childhood process of
experience, contributes to the reality of the story, involves the child, and effectively

communicates the storys message. If the story is set in summer, allow yourself to feel
the heat and let your voice express it: Phew, it is so hot. If you are describing an
activity that you really love or feel passionate about doing, bring the passion into your
voice. If your story begins with stress and arousal, experiencing the arousal yourself will
allow it to be reflected in your voice. As you lead the content of the tale into a state of
tranquility it will be heard and experienced more by your listener if you are also
experiencing and expressing it. Your story will have greater reality for the child if he or
she can really feel what is happening instead of just hearing the words. Hearing the
content is a cognitive experience, whereas feeling the emotion is an affective experience
and affective learning is often more powerful. For a child, encountering a big, barking
dog (hopefully secured behind a fence) is more likely to induce fear and avoidance
behavior than a parental warning to keep away from strange dogs. The feeling of
achievement from scoring a goal for your school at a sports event can be a more
powerful encouragement to train than any parental nagging. If we combine both the
cognitive and the affective we maximize the potential for effectively communicating the
storys message.
The last guideline is aligning affect with the story. By aligning affect, I
mean that the story needs to tell of the same emotion in its content as in the storytellers
voice, that the expressed emotion is congruent with the emotion of the story. Children,
being emotionally responsive, are quick to read any misalignment of emotions. Take the
example of little
Johnny, who has accidentally broken Moms most prized possession. She has heard the
crash, races into the room, and sees the shattered pieces of her beloved object. Within a
nanosecond, her jaws have clenched, her face reddened, her teeth clamped together,
her hands knotted in fists as if ready to punch his lights out. She says through gritted
teeth, Dont be frightened. Come here to Mommy. What do you think little Johnny is
going to believe and respond tothe emotion in her body language, or the content of
her words? If he has any sense of self-preservation, he is probably out of the door and
running. People read body language and affect long before they hear the words. In
infancy, prior to the development of speech or the understanding of words from the
parents, children survive by reading the overt expression of emotions. There are times to
be close and times to back off. There are particular times to express your needs and
times to be quiet. Learning to discriminate between them is important to our early and
subsequent well-being. What this means for the storyteller is that we need to ensure we

not only have affective involvement in the story, but that the involvement is appropriate,
and the feeling tone is aligned to the storys content.