Where to go if your voice is a problem?

New audio guide launched on 19 September 2021

Since the 2019/2020 winter semester, audio guide texts for the permanent exhibition "Experience. Change. Persist. Village life in the 19th century". Together with Dr Steiner-Sohn, the acting director of the museum, students from the University of Erfurt and Dr Wallraff, a large part of the basic texts were designed, edited and recorded. Since 19 September 2021, visitors to the Folklore Museum have been able to explore the exhibition independently with the audio guide .

The students from the University of Erfurt benefited in particular from the teaching of application-orientated vocal and speech basics for use in the speaking profession of teachers. Professional support was provided by the employees of the Folklore Museum. In addition to the professionalisation of the students' speaking skills, the project focused on questions of museum education.
The students were encouraged to contribute their suggestions for the further design of the exhibition for children of primary school age.

The first weeks of everyday corona life ...

Half a year of the pandemic was over ... Many thought it was over ...
So in September 2020, the Folklore Museum launched an appeal:
"Bring your coronavirus memories to the museum!". Numerous texts and submissions were submitted over the next few weeks until 15 October 2020, dealing with the following questions.

o What did we experience in the first weeks of the pandemic?
o What was people's everyday life like?
o What was it like in the hospitals?
o How did people feel?

In the winter semester 2020/2021, selected texts were set to music by twelve students from the University of Erfurt for the Folklore Museum 's archive with the permission of the authors of these texts.
Perhaps these audio recordings will one day form the basis for an exhibition when we reflect on the questions of the coronavirus era.
Contact persons: Dr Uta Wallraff and Dr Steiner-Sohn

"Colourful things from the reading box - students read for students" - this was the motto of the first digital reading event held on 20 November 2020 to mark the 17th National Reading Aloud Day, which was organised by the subject area of Speech and Language Centre at the University of Erfurt and attended by almost 50 participants.

Speaking texts and teaching reading are tools that every primary school teacher needs for their German lessons. With this in mind, the Speech and Language Centre offers selected courses where students can work on their reading expression skills using speech and voice stylistics. Katharina Osterhammer, Katharina Krüger, Christin Kunkel and Anabel Böhme, four former students from the reading and text speaking courses, read. The selection of literature offered something for all ages - e.g. texts by W. Sutejew, C. S. Lewis, C. Strayed and R. Seethaler. There was also a short interview with the readers about their personal reading experiences. Finally, the participants were able to take part in a quiz with questions about reading.

A second digital read-aloud event took place on 28 May 2021. The reading foxes presented the "Favourite books of the university grown-ups for the primary school little ones".

The audience consisted of a total of four primary school classes in years 1 and 2 as well as their class teachers or supervisors. The cooperation resulted from various internships of the Vorlese-Füchse, who sought contact with former internship classes and enquired about the project. It was met with great interest, which is why five reading aloud foxes (Anabel Böhme, Katharina Krüger, Sina Kreuzberger, Julia Matzkewitz, Pauline Halacka) and university lecturer Sophie Hohlbein presented their favourite primary school books and read passages from them. For example, they read about an enchanted hat, a master thief or Michael Ende and Cornelia Funke. Despite technical difficulties, both school and homeschooling pupils listened intently and enjoyed using the "clap" icon function in Webex. In addition to the texts, a small interview round and a video clip were incorporated into the one-hour programme. A repeat of the programme in person is planned.

To mark International Literacy Day, the "Vorlese-Füchse" organised a third read-aloud event on 8 September 2021, this time in cooperation with the Bildungswerk der Thüringer Wirtschaft e.V. at the Mühlhausen (Thuringia) site.

The group of readers consisted of a total of four students from teaching-related degree programmes (Christin, Kunkel, Christin Held, Cedric Rische, Tjark Hahn) and university lecturer Sophie Hohlbein. Together with the project manager responsible at the Bildungswerk, Ms Rita Laufer, the event and the selection of texts were specially adapted to participants whose basic education skills in the workplace are not sufficient due to a low level of education, migration background or health problems (reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.). Therefore, in addition to the problem of illiteracy, the texts also dealt with other barriers such as insufficient educational opportunities, German as a foreign language or language barriers in everyday life. The aim of the event was on the one hand to make reading and writing fun for the participants and to show them different ways to support them and on the other hand to give the students new insights into adult education. After initial reluctance, the participants actively took part in the project, listened intently to the texts presented or actively took part in the Kahoot quiz on offer (with a prize, of course). The feedback from both the participants and the project manager Ms Laufer was very positive and new project ideas have already been exchanged. The event took place in compliance with the existing coronavirus regulations and corresponding hygiene guidelines. And the reading foxes? They "really enjoyed it and it was really good"! (Quote from Christin H.)

"Come, tell me a story" .... Under this motto, twelve imaginative and wonderful stories were created by students of the University of Erfurt in the winter semester 2020/2021 to pictures by psychologist and artist Dr Swetlana Philipp (FSU Jena).

The Arts of Free Storytelling combines high rhetorical and elocutionary skills that every German teacher should master as a craft. In the basic speaker training course under the direction of Dr Uta Wallraff (University of Erfurt), the students worked primarily on their personal speech and voice expression and creatively implemented this in their own stories.

Other narrative techniques and impulses were also practised during the course: storytelling based on a text, storytelling with an object, storytelling from different perspectives. The Literary Studies analysis of texts and the art-theoretical examination of the pictorial object provided a scientific foundation for the narrative work. Some of the stories will soon be available to listen to on Dr Swetlana Philipp's homepage.

Dr Uta Wallraff (Language Centre, University of Erfurt) and Dr Swetlana Philipp (Institute for Psychosocial Medicine, Psychotherapy and Psychooncology, Friedrich Schiller University Hospital Jena) are available to answer any further questions.

Individual voice consultations for employees of the University of Erfurt were offered during the summer semester 2024 by the subject area of speech training and in cooperation with university health management. This is a 30-minute individual consultation (face-to-face or online) in which your own voice and speech are analysed and exercises are derived to strengthen your voice and speech in the future. Sophie Laufer carried out a total of 25 consultations, which were received and reflected on positively throughout: "Thank you very much for the really informative meeting, your expertise and the materials. I will integrate your exercises into my everyday life and have already realised after our short time what a positive effect it had. Thank you very much once again."

In the summer semester 2024, the podcast "Uni & Erfurt" - the campus compass - was created within the StuFus "Stimme und Sprechen im Podcast" and in cooperation with Media Communication under Ms Voigt.

The podcast is generally about studying at UE, life in Erfurt and tips and tricks that make studying unforgettable and uncomplicated at the same time. In the summer semester, 6 entertaining and interesting episodes have already been produced, which have been published weekly on the university website, Spotify and Apple Podcasts since 01.07.2024. Dr Hoppe and her course "English in International Contexts" have produced two further English-language episodes in order to address foreign students and provide them with information about their studies.

Due to the overall positive feedback, the podcast will be continued by Ms Laufer as part of two speech training courses. You can look forward to new and interesting episodes.

We are often asked by students and colleagues: What can I do for my voice? When should I go to the doctor? Which exercises are good for my voice?
The online course "Body - Voice - Posture" from Martin Luther University Halle covers many of these questions. The linked material is suitable for self-study for anyone who wants to professionalise their voice, even if it is specifically tailored to prospective teachers.

The German Pronunciation Database is the first freely accessible pronunciation database that contains over 130000 lemmas for almost every German word. It is based on years of pronunciation research by colleagues at the Department of Speech Science and Phonetics in Halle. The accompanying German Pronunciation Dictionary (KRECH/STOCK/HIRSCHFELD/ANDERS 2009) is the most up-to-date and scientifically sound pronunciation dictionary of German. It answers the question of which pronunciation variants of the words "China", "Balkon" or "Salat" are correct and close to the standard or which are more likely to be categorised as colloquial.