Saxon sighed softly in exasperation as he listened to the way Ji addressed the students before class started. So unprofessional… At the question, Axis set down whatever he was sewing and raised his hand.
"Yes, Axis." Saxon gestured to the boy with a slight nod.
"Redundancy is when you use two or more words together that have basically the same meaning."
"Very good, and why should we avoid redundancy?"
"Because it's distracting and annoying, and it also adds unnecessary length."
Saxon nodded again and resumed his pacing. "Good. Anyone else have anything to say about our speech properties?"
Hali raised his hand with so much velocity Ji expected the kid would have flown up with it. Hesitantly, Ji called on him.
“Pacing! It’s the rate at which you’re speaking,” he said proudly, pushing up his glasses.
Ji nodded. “Precisely! Can you tell me why it’s so important?”
“Give more time for the words that need it, give less time when something is building up to something?” Layla replied, tilting her head to the side.
“Exaaactly,” Ji said, word all drawn out as he continued nodding. “If you’re speaking about something with such high intensity and want the audience to feel that—“ he stood up now, setting his board to the side as he gestured with his hands— “you’re gonna want to speed it up. And then, for the drop?”
He paused, hands out like he was settling the crowd. A smile flickered across his face as he slowly continued, “You’ll want to slow… it… down. That way, you really drill in your message. Give it pauses. Give your words time to soak in. You can’t drill something into your audience’s head with a blunt screw, can you?”
There were a few mutters of agreement among the students, Sebastian leaning slightly forward and looking more comfortable as Ji talked.
Saxon nodded a bit as he listened to Hali answer the question. "Excellent. Anyone else?" He looked around the room at the students. "Hmm… Cas!" The student looked up, looking a bit worried. "Can you tell me about fluctuations?" Cas just stared at Saxon for several seconds.
"Uhm… sorry sir, I can't…"
Saxon sighed softly. "Alright… Liese?" The girl glanced up when she was addressed.
"Um… basically changing the volume or tone of your voice to make a point or… something." Saxon nodded a bit.
"Mhmm. And they are a good thing to use, why?"
"To… make your speech more interesting? Or to… um… make you sound less dead?"
Ji let out a slight laugh, nodding. “‘Less dead.’ I like that, Liese. But, in reality, that’s actually exactly what it is. No one wants to listen to a monotonous speech, right? It’d be about as entertaining as listening to a robot read tax papers or the terms of service.”
After he finished speaking, Sebastian raised a hand tentatively. His blond hair had fallen into his eyes and he didn’t bother to fix it, engrossed with the sudden courage to answer a question.
“Yes, Sebs?” Ji asked casually, nodding to him.
“Isn’t fluctuation and projection the same thing…?” he mumbled, a notepaper filled already before him.
“Not exactly,” Ji replied, holding up a finger. “Fluctuation is changing your pitch in your voice to make something sound more appealing or engaging, yeah? It makes you sound less mannered, less ‘by the books.’ Projection is about tone variation. How LOUD you are versus how quiet you can be. If you have a larger audience, you might want to project louder, speak more clearly. But if you have a smaller audience, you can vary that however you see fit.”
Saxon nodded again and glanced down at the papers on the desk for a moment. "Correct… does anyone else have anything to add before we get into the actual lesson?" He asked. His students shook their heads a bit. "Alright, then." He turned on the projector so he could start going through the slides that he had prepared on the subject. "Now, these are just the basics. We'll go more in depth next class."
Ji strode over to behind the desk, flicking a switch to dim the lights. The first slide clicked on and he could see the faint reflection in Hali’s glasses as he leaned forward, squinting lightly. Layla seemed checked-out already, starting to mess with the slight fringe on her jacket. Sebastian just sat back in his chair, head tilted to the side so he could see better.
Maybe it was a teacher thing, but Ji had high hopes for Sebastian. The kid wrote insanely great speeches, and knew very well how to deliver them. The only issue was stage-fright, and while Ji had never really experienced it himself, he could tell by the way Sebs reacted to the thought of taking the spotlight, it was serious. Regardless, Ji was stubborn, and would help the boy through it however he could.
Saxon looked out at his students as he presented the information on the slides. Cas was fidgeting with his pencil, nibbling on the end of it nervously. The kid was only five feet tall and he was full grown. He was self conscious and terrified of everything. Hell, he had a therapy cat that always came with him to class. Nix had become something of a mascot within the class.
Axis was easily the best of the three academically. Although he was quiet and not the most social, he wrote very good speeches and performed them pretty well. He caught onto things easily, and so spent most of his time in class sewing.
Liese hardly spoke in class at all and she clearly didn't want to be there, but she did well enough academically. She always seemed tired, but she tried anyway.
