World Voice Day

The idea to devote a special day, each year on April 16, to the voice was originally launched in 1999 by the Brazilian Society of Laryngology and Voice. It was the result of a mixed initiative of physicians, speech-language pathologists and singing teachers that belonged to the former association ‘Sociedade Brasileira de Laringologia e Voz – SBLV’ (Brazilian Society of Laryngology and Voice), under the presidency of Dr. Nedio Steffen. In 2002 the Portuguese laryngologist Professor Mario Andrea, Portugal, then President of the European Laryngological Society, suggested that World Voice Day (WVD) should be celebrated all over the world. In the United States, the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery officially recognized this celebration in 2002 and in that year the event obtained the name ‘World Voice Day’. In 2016 more than 700 events took place.

WVD - is a worldwide annual event devoted to the celebration of the phenomenon of voice. The aim is to demonstrate the enormous importance of the voice in the daily lives of all people, and brings global awareness to the need for preventing voice problems, rehabilitating the deviant or sick voice, training the artistic voice, and researching the function and application of voice.

A goal of World Voice Day is to encourage all those who use their voice for business or pleasure to learn to take care of their voice, and know how to seek help and training, and to support research on the voice.

Can teacher’s voice quality affect children’s learning? The answer is yes – experimental studies show that children are affected in different ways depending on their cognitive capacities, gender and possible hearing impraiment.

The voice provides the main tool for both semantic and emotional communication, and is therefore relevant to auditory perception, psychology, neurology, cognition, linguistics and phonetics. It is a crucial tool not only in education but also in the daily work for about 30% of the entire working population.

Source: world-voice-day.org | entnet.org | vocaldisorders.org