No presentation can be effective if the audience can’t hear you. Nor will your presentation be successful if you overwhelm your listeners with a voice that is too loud. When you speak before a group, you usually need to speak louder than you do in general conversation. The size of the room, the presence or absence of a microphone, and background nise may also call for adjustments. Take your cues from audience feedback. If you are not loud enough, you may see listeners leaning forward, straining to hear. If you speak too loudly, they may unconsciously lean back, pulling away from the noise.
You should also be aware that different cultures have different norms and expectations concerning appropriate loudness. For example, in some Mediterranean cultures, a loud voice signifies strength and sincerity, whereas in some Asian and American Indian cultures, a soft voice is associated with good manners and education.’7 When members of your audience come from a variety of cultural and ethnic groups, be especially attentive to feedback on this point.
To speak at the proper loudness, you must have good breath control. If you are breathing improperly, you will not have enough force to project your voice so that you can be heard at the back of a room. Improper breathing can also cause you to run out of breath before you finish a phrase or come to an appropriate pause. To check whether you are breathing properly for speaking, do the following:
Stand with your feet approximately eight inches apart. Place your hands on your lower rib cage, thumbs to the front, fingers to the back. Take a deep breath—in through your nose and out through
slightly parted lips. If you are breathing correctly, you should feel your ribs moving up and out as you inhale.
Improper breathing affects more than just the loudness of your speech. If you breathe by raising your shoulders, the muscles in your neck and throat will become tense. This can result in a harsh, strained vocal quality. Moreover, you probably will not take in enough air to sustain your phrasing, and the release of air will become difficult to control. The air and sound will all come out with a rush when you drop your shoulders, leading to unfortunate oral punctuation marks when you don’t want or need them. To see if you have a problem, try this exercise:
rake a normal breath and see how long you can count while exhaling. If you cannot reach fifteen without losing volume or feeling the need to breathe, you need to work on extending your breath control. Begin by counting in one breath to a number comfortable for you, then gradually increase the count over successive tries. Do not try to compensate by breathing too deeply. Deep breathing takes too much time and attracts too much attention while you are speaking. Use the longer pauses in your speech to breathe, and make note of your breathing pattern as you practice your speech.
You should vary the loudness of words and phrases in your speech, just as you vary your pitch and your rate of speaking. Changes in loudness are often used to express emotion. The more excited or angry we are, the louder we tend to become. But don’t let yourself get caught in the trap of having only two options: loud and louder. Decreasing your volume, slowing your rate, pausing, or dropping your pitch can also express emotion quite effectively. Vanderbilt student speaker Leslie Eason illustrated this dramatically as she introduced her speech on racism. As she read the concluding lines of her poem (“What if I go to heaven, and then to me they tell, White angels enter here, Black angels go to hell”), Leslie reduced her loudness, lowered her pitch, and slowed her rate. These vocal contrasts had a dramatic impact on listeners.
To acquire more variety in loudness, practice the following exercise recommended by Hiliman and Jewell: “First, count to five at a soft volume, as if you were speaking to one person. Then, count to five at medium volume, as if speaking to ten or fifteen people. Finally, count to five, as if speaking to thirty or more people.”If you tape-record this exercise, you should be able to hear the clear progression in loudness.

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