Unit 3 · Voice and delivery.

By the end Find and hold a speaking pace slow enough to be understood at the back of a hall.

You need A timer. A room with some distance in it.

1. 5 min — Too fast, on purpose. Read a paragraph aloud as fast as you can. Then read it at the pace you want them to use. Let them hear the gap rather than be told a number.
2. 8 min — Count it. Students read 100 words of their own story and time it. Aim for 100 to 130 words a minute. Slower than they think. Much slower than nerves will make them go.
3. 10 min — Walk it. In pairs, one student stands at the far end of the room. The other reads. If the listener misses a word, they raise a hand and the reader starts the sentence again, slower.
4. 2 min — The rule. On the night, nerves will add about 20 percent to your speed. So practice 20 percent slower than feels right.

To finish Homework: record 100 words and check the time.

By the end Use a two-second pause deliberately at three points in the story.

You need A timer, or a partner counting.

1. 6 min — Feel two seconds. Have the class count two seconds silently. It feels much longer than it is. Then tell a joke and pause before the last line, so they feel the pull.
2. 8 min — Three places. Teach only three: before the most important sentence, after it, and at the very end before you say thank you.
3. 12 min — Mark the script. Students draw a // at their three pause points and read the passage aloud to a partner, who counts the pause out loud afterward.
4. 4 min — Silence is not a mistake. Say it plainly: a pause looks like confidence and a rush looks like fear, even when the speaker feels the same inside.

To finish Homework: read your ending aloud with a two-second pause before the last sentence.

By the end Hold eye contact with three different parts of the room during a two-minute telling.

You need Chairs arranged in a rough arc.

1. 4 min — The three anchors. Teach the simplest version that works: left, middle, right. One sentence to each, then round again. No need to meet anybody's eyes exactly.
2. 10 min — Practice with objects. Put three objects at the back of the room. Students speak to the objects, not to people. Most of the fear goes when the eyes have somewhere to land.
3. 6 min — Swap in people. Three classmates sit where the objects were. Same exercise.
4. 2 min — One honest note. Sustained eye contact with an elder or a stranger is read differently in Thai culture than in Western culture. In this competition the judges expect it; outside this room, students should use their own judgment.

To finish Homework: tell one paragraph to a family member while looking at them.

By the end Speak loudly enough to be heard at the back without shouting.

You need The largest room available.

1. 5 min — From the diaphragm. Hand on the stomach. Breathe so the hand moves, not the shoulders. Say one sentence on that breath. This is the whole technique.
2. 8 min — The back wall game. A student stands at the front, one at the very back. The back student raises a hand the moment they cannot hear. The speaker adjusts.
3. 8 min — Loud is not fast, loud is not high. Practice saying the same sentence louder while keeping pitch and speed the same. Most students raise pitch instead of volume and it sounds panicked.
4. 4 min — Outside. If there is space, do the last round outdoors. A hall with 200 people absorbs far more sound than an empty classroom.

To finish Homework: say your opening line at full volume, once, somewhere nobody can hear you.

By the end Deliver the hardest moment of their own story without flattening the emotion out of it.

You need A quiet room and enough time not to rush.

1. 5 min — Name the risk. Tell them plainly: the moment you care about most is the one you will speed through, because speeding through it hurts less. Slowing down there is the whole skill.
2. 10 min — Mark it. Each student finds the single sentence in their story that costs them the most to say, and underlines it.
3. 15 min — Say it three times. In pairs, read only that sentence, three times, slowly. The listener says nothing at all. No feedback, no comfort, no fixing.
4. 5 min — Stop there. Do not push anyone further. If a student cannot say their sentence today, that is information, not failure — they may need a different story, and that is a private conversation, not a class one.

To finish No homework.

By the end Cut filler sounds — er, um, ah, แบบว่า — to fewer than five in two minutes.

You need A partner with a pencil.

1. 4 min — Count mine. Speak for one minute deliberately full of fillers. Have the class count. Then speak a clean minute. Let them hear the difference.
2. 10 min — The tally. In pairs, one speaks for two minutes while the other puts a mark on paper for every filler. No interrupting. Then swap.
3. 8 min — Replace with silence. The fix is not to try harder. It is to close the mouth and wait. Practice the same two minutes again, replacing every filler with a closed-mouth pause.
4. 3 min — The number. They write today's count and next week's target. Most students halve it in one session.

To finish Homework: two minutes to a family member, who counts.

By the end Stand still and grounded for a full two minutes.

You need Space to stand.

1. 4 min — Show the problem. Tell thirty seconds of a story while rocking, pacing and touching your face. Ask what they noticed. They will not remember a word you said.
2. 6 min — Feet. Both feet flat, shoulder width, weight even. Hands loose at the sides or lightly together. That is the whole posture.
3. 12 min — Two minutes of stillness. In groups of three, each student tells part of their story while the other two watch only the body. Feedback is one sentence: what your body did that your story did not need.
4. 3 min — Permitted movement. One step forward at the turning point of the story. That is all. A single deliberate move is worth more than constant motion.

To finish Homework: stand still in front of a mirror for two minutes while telling any part of the story.

By the end Deliver the whole story inside the band for their age — for ป.4–6, between 5:00 and 6:00.

You need A visible timer. Their script.

1. 5 min — The rule they will be scored on. OBEC's bands: ป.4–6 five to six minutes, ม.1–3 six to seven, ม.4–6 seven to eight. Thirty seconds either side is free; after that it is one point a minute off the five points for keeping to time. The window is narrow on purpose.
2. 20 min — Time it three times. Each student times a full run. Write down all three numbers. Almost nobody is inside the window on the first attempt.
3. 12 min — Cut or grow. Too long: cut explanation first (Lesson 8), then description, never the turn. Too short: add one concrete detail to the place and one line of dialogue — never a new event.
4. 3 min — Write the target. Each student writes their three times and what they cut, at the top of the script.

To finish Homework: one more timed run at home. Bring the number.

By the end Give and receive one piece of useful feedback on a full telling.

You need Pairs. A timer.

1. 5 min — Teach the feedback frame. Only three sentences, in this order: one thing I could see clearly. One thing I could not follow. One thing I will remember tomorrow. Nothing else — no advice, no grammar corrections.
2. 24 min — Full runs. Each partner tells the whole story once, uninterrupted, timed. Then three sentences of feedback. Then swap.
3. 8 min — Act on one. Each student picks exactly one piece of feedback and changes one thing. Not all of it. One.
4. 3 min — Why the frame is narrow. Open feedback in a Thai classroom tends to become either silence or grammar correction. The three sentences force something useful and keep it kind.

To finish Homework: make the one change and read it aloud once.

By the end Record a full run and identify three fixable things by listening back.

You need A phone with a voice recorder. If yours is the only one, record five or six students a lesson and work through the class across the week — the rest rehearse in pairs while you do.

1. 5 min — Warn them. Everybody hates their own recorded voice. Say so before they hear it, or half the class will decide they are bad at English when they are only hearing themselves for the first time.
2. 15 min — Record. In pairs, each student records a full run. Nothing else.
3. 12 min — Listen with a pen. They listen once and write three things: one place I rushed, one word I could not say, one place I was good. The third is compulsory.
4. 3 min — Keep it. Save the file. In Lesson 49 they record again and compare. That comparison is the most convincing evidence of progress they will get.

To finish Homework: listen to the recording once more and write down the one word you most want to fix.