Join us for our 27th webinar for a FREE introduction to Knight-Thompson Speechwork. KTS Certified Teachers Keri Safran and Foster Johns will outline a brief history of Knight-Thompson Speechwork, discuss what are (perhaps) principles that guide this work, and lead participants through an exploration of the vocal tract and basic speech actions. Your curiosity is invited for a KTS refresher, an introduction, or just to have a good time with speakin’ sounds! Keri Safran is a performer and Knight-Thompson Speechwork Certified Teacher who splits her time between New York City, Los Angeles and the Berkshires. Her clients range from Oscar & Tony winners […]
Questions about this or any webinar? Contact KTS Webinar Series organizers Jeff Parker and Julie Foh at ktswebinars@gmail.com. Please join us Tuesday, August 28th, at 3pm (EDT) for our 15th Knight-Thompson Speechwork webinar! KTS Certified Teacher Julie Foh will host a FREE Introduction to Knight-Thompson Speechwork. If you’re curious about KTS, have had a taste of the work and want more, or want to refresh your relationship to it, please join us. Julie will outline some fundamental principles (perhaps) of this approach to speech and accent training and will lead participants through some introductory exploration of the physical actions of […]
Sorry for any confusion! You are now in the right place (ktspeechwork.org) to register for this webinar. If you’ve already completed this process on the old website (ktspeechwork.com) then there’s nothing to worry about. We’ve still got those records, and there’s no need to register again. If you haven’t registered yet, this is the place to do it. If you’re planning on waiting for the last possible moment to register…don’t. Go ahead and register using the “tickets” section at the bottom of the page. Please join us Monday, July 30th, at 3pm (EDT) for our 14th Knight-Thompson Speechwork webinar! […]
Please join us Monday, March 19th, at 3pm (EST) for our 11th Knight-Thompson Speechwork Webinar! Tyler Seiple will offer: “Process, Product, and Principles, Perhaps: Adapting KTS to Short-Term Goals.” This online discussion will focus on how we adapt the foundational principles of Knight-Thompson Speechwork into the many different educational and coaching scenarios in which we find ourselves employed. How do we frame, discuss, and explore KTS in a three-year graduate program as well as a one-off coaching session, an undergraduate workshop as well as an ongoing public class? Tyler will share his own experience as well as invite discussion with […]
I recently attended a two-day webinar devoted to transgender voice and communication training for voice clinicians. It was a fantastic experience, and I would recommend the training without hesitation. Even in a super-inclusive and culturally-sensitive environment, people are bound to put a foot in a mouth occasionally– we’re only human, and our implicit biases often slip under the radar. The workshop leaders acknowledged this at the outset, and called these slips “teaching moments”– opportunities to clarify our thinking and our language. At one point, someone said that they didn’t teach “uptalk” to trans women, because it wasn’t “assertive.” My cultural […]
(Roots, part III) The teaching of any prescriptive speech pattern as some sort of basis or ‘neutral’ will inevitably encode privilege and elitism, alienate actors from nonstandard speech backgrounds, and actively impede the acquisition of accurate and detailed perception and the ability to subtly adapt one’s own speech and accent. It’s been a ridiculous fourteen months since I last posted. Even worse, at the end of that post, I teased the next part of the story, promising to write soon about Why the Detail Model Had to Go. Better late than never, I suppose. This is that post. […]
I’ve been thinking a lot this fall about the roots of this work. Unitarian Universalists like to talk about roots and wings. Roots ground you, connect you to where you’ve come from and what’s important. They form your support system and give you structure, organization, stability, and sustenance. Wings carry you aloft. They are those things that inspire you, that lift you up and out into the world and into ever widening circles of possibility. Individuals, families, and communities all need both roots and wings to flourish and thrive[1]. I think rich, coherent bodies of work, like Knight-Thompson Speechwork, also […]
