My Favourite Female Voice
My favourite female voice over voice of the moment, isn’t actually English – she’s American – and I first heard her voice on Julia Cameron’s famous and wonderful book – The Artist’s Way.
This woman – Eliza Foss – has music in her soul and diction that could cut like a sabatier knife (sharp!) – no word is wasted and listening to her is like comfortable trip up hill and down dale over beautiful rolling green hills with delightful views all the way – I highly recommend her!
Here is a link to her page on Audible  – I’ve just put 4 of her narration titles in my basket – to research and recommend to my students.
Every ‘t’ is present, every ‘d’, and no sentence drains away… All her phrases are equally filled with energy and fervour yet incredibly relaxing like a comfortable, well upholstered wing backed chair… sit down, lean in and enjoy 🙂
A lot of English people do terrible American accents – over emphasising the R’s and losing or destroying their t’s but the great and most famous American actors – do not ditch a single t.
Everyone knows Julia Roberts, whether you’re my age or 20 years younger, likewise Meryl Streep.
Their diction is excellent. Great diction means everyone can understand you which means everyone enjoys hearing you, which of course raises your profile and your popularity. .. wherever you work 🙂
If you would like to improve your diction either in American English or English English, either way, Eliza Foss is your woman – she’s superb..
Audio ‘ear washing’ 🙂 is terribly important if you want to improve your clarity.
If you want to learn something – go to the best – Eliza has superb clarity and is entertaining to listen to because of the undulation in her phrasing
I recommend going to sleep listening to your favourite female voice – as this action has helped me learn a particular  accent – I have literally woken up being able to talk like the person to whom I was listening!
We speak as the sum or the result of whom we most hear.
Find A Favourite Voice
So because of this, if the person you most hear has a particular accent, you will probably sound very similar to them – or at the very least, have  picked up particular sounds from them – maybe a certain vowel or the use of f instead of th or the sound n instead of ng or even the musicality and rhythm of their voice, as well as the intonation..
BUT – we can use this to our advantage!
By choosing the particular sounds we want and then finding a voice we like, preferably that embodies all those special attributes.
Personally I love great diction and a lively musicality that is natural and expressive.
Eliza Foss’s vocal delivery has these qualities in buckets full. Â I have never heard her misplace a word tonally or miss-stress a word in a phrase or let a sentence die out..
I highly recommend you listen to her.
The globally successful publishing house Macmillan have employed her to read over 30 books and that’s just one publishing house!
Another tip: if you don’t want to fall asleep listening to her, try listening to her when you are doing other things that are physical.
I’ve noticed when my audio defences are down because I’m focusing on what I’m doing, this can also help me really absorb the sounds I’m hearing.
I don’t necessarily absorb the content of the words, but I do absorb the sounds.
In fact afterwards the voice in my head seems to have transmogrified into that person! I speak like them in my head!
A final thought: my favourite of her narrations, that I recommend you begin with, is definitely, The Artist’s Way.
If you are not at all arty and would find the thought of this book rather irritating 🙂 then I leave it up to you.
She has read a very wide variety of books so I am sure you find something to your taste 🙂
Here is the link again – enjoy 🙂 Eliza Foss
