Choral Reading and Great Speeches

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Devil's advocate

From: Mark Bulger
Date: 17 Oct 2011
Time: 13:29:17 -0500
Remote Name: 72.93.175.44

Comments

I'll grant that choral reading could be of benefit to some people in certain situations, but as you note in a response above, at heart it's just a trick. Choral reading could be a benefit by giving the moderate or severe stutterer the experience of extended periods of normal speech. On the other hand, it works because it's a crutch. It can never be done in a normal conversational situation, and once that over voice stops talking, you're right back where you started. In a sense, choral speaking is like watching a magic trick from backstage. Once you know how the trick works, there's no sense seeing it again. Regarding James Earl Jones, he's a problematic role model. Jones is one of those rare people who doesn't stutter during rhetorical speaking. But he does still stutter when he orders at a restaurant. So what does he success do for the 99.9% of stutterers who are not professional actors? His success is more a novelty and a dead end than anything else. If that weren't true, stuttering therapy would consist of putting kids in drama classes and curing them. Again, I do see some value in this practice. I just think it's quite limited in what it can potentially do. Any crutch works until you pull it away. Stutter is a failure in speech communication, and sitting in your room alone talking along with a script with another person's voice propping you up isn't communication.


Last changed: 10/17/11