ABSTRACT
The human brain is an amazing organ. It is thought that our capacity for spoken language evolved about one and a half to two million years ago, even before modern humans, homo sapiens, appeared on the scene. Unlike other animals, we have specific ‘language areas’ in the brain, which are concerned with both constructing and comprehending speech, though many other brain areas are also involved in the act of communication. No two brains are the same – we all develop individually, according to the genes we have inherited from our ancestors and according to the outside influences on us in childhood (and indeed, throughout our life) that shape the neural pathways as we learn. For those reasons, some people will be more musical than others, or find it easier to read aloud, partly because they have inherited those abilities but also because they were exposed to that kind of activity in childhood. We still have the capacity to go on developing and learning throughout our lives, though, so practising a skill will help forge
the right connections in the brain to make it easier for you. If you don’t practise, you might as well not have tried to pick up the new skill in the first place – use it or lose it. Reading this book won’t give you a better broadcasting voice. Practising what it suggests – over and over again – will. Practice is the first of several ‘P’s you will come across in this chapter.
