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The “Good Speech Movement” at Smith: A History of the Spoken English Department: Timeline

Guide to the history of the Spoken English department and its college-wide voice correction campaign. Written by Sonia Carroll '24, Reference Assistant.

Voice and speech survey given to students prior to examination. Freshmen Spoken English, 1934 - 1942. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. 

Timeline of the Spoken English Department

  • 1877: Founding of the Elocution department. 

  • 1877 - 1917: Elocution department offers courses in dramatics and Spoken English. Overall departmental emphasis on theatricality of the voice, with less emphasis on correction. At some point during this time, voice and speech tests for all first-year students became mandatory. 

  • 1917 - 1919: Elocution department becomes Spoken English department under President William Allan Neilson. 

  • 1919: Spoken English faculty member Helen W. Landon writes to President William Allan Neilson reporting that 60% of the first-year class at Smith has voice defects and calling for more resources to be allocated to the Spoken English department.(1)

  • 1923: Spoken English department sends a request to President William Allan Neilson asking to host a 6-week summer program "for the purpose of helping, through the promotion of speech education, to raise the standard of American speech and to encourage the scientific teaching of Spoken English." The department refers to this ideology as the “Good Speech Movement at Smith.”(2)

  • 1928: Compulsory voice and speech tests are abolished at Smith. Records from after 1928 indicate that students may have still been required, or at least given strong incentive, to take these voice and speech tests up through the 1940s.(3-5)

  • 1931: Spoken English faculty conduct a study on students who performed the lowest on the voice and speech tests and conclude that “racial or local accent” and “poor personality” are among the main contributors to these students’ speech “defects.”(4)

  • 1933: President William Allan Neilson makes a public address in support of the Spoken English Department, echoing the department’s ideology that there are “distinct levels of speech.”(6)

  • 1933 - 1941: Spoken English department continues its voice correction campaign. 

  • 1941: Results of first-year voice and speech tests indicate that close to 90% of the students have moderate to severe voice "defects."(7)

  • 1942 - 1968: Spoken English department experiences a slow decline in voice correction and research activities. Voice and speech tests are no longer administered after the early 1940s. Spoken English theater productions continue into the early 1960s. Records of the Spoken English department exist through 1968, suggesting that the department ceased to exist then or shortly thereafter. 


  1. Letter from Helen W. Landon to William Allan Neilson, February 11, 1919. Departments- Spoken English, 1919-39, undated. Office of President William Allan Neilson Files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00013, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  2. Department of Spoken English request for 6-week summer session, 1923. Departments- Spoken English, 1919-39, undated. Office of President William Allan Neilson Files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00013, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  3. Vera Sickels Obituary, Smith Alumnae Quarterly Digital Winter 1985, pp. 69-70. Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  4. Speech Dept: Study of Students in "Group III Freshman Year," certain. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. 
  5. Freshmen Spoken English, 1934 - 1942. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. 
  6. Spoken English Department, Jan. 1933. Speech Department Courses: descriptions, exams, and notebook, 1925-1968. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
  7. March 1941, Freshman Spoken English Tests results breakdown by group. Freshmen Spoken English, 1934 - 1942. Department of Theatre records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01079, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.