It's no secret that the ability to speak beautifully, it is necessary for every person to defend their point of view correctly and logically, and doubly so for those who speak publicly. Ability to persuade people - a gift from nature or an acquired skill and how to achieve success in persuading your interlocutor? This is perhaps one of the most pressing questions today, which sooner or later faces everyone who has entered the information business, who has entered a profession that involves the need to speak in front of an audience. A confident speaking interlocutor always makes you feel comfortable communicating with him; you want to be as open as possible in such a conversation.
Develop beautiful speech skills always necessary. You can do this either independently or by attending trainings and webinars on public speaking.
Today I want to talk about speech technique exercises available to everyone. The most important thing for successfully using them in your practice is desire and regular practical application. The result, believe me, will not keep you waiting.
Exercise 1. Articulation gymnastics.
It would seem that we know this technique from school. But do we use it? Why? Yes, because we find this technique boring and uninteresting. So I suggest doing this set of exercises “jokingly”. Make faces in front of the mirror, make fun of yourself or your loved one during this exercise. And the process won’t seem so boring to you! I will present the simplest complex in this article, I hope that it will be useful to you.
Each exercise must be repeated at least ten times. By the way, this gymnastics promotes relaxation, which is very important before an important public performance: 1. Raise your eyebrows up. 2. Move your eyebrows towards the center. 3.Pull in both cheeks. 4.Puff up your cheeks at the same time, and then one at a time. 5. Press on your cheeks with your tongue. 6.Run your tongue in circles behind closed lips. 7.Click your tongue. 8.Press the upper and lower lips with your tongue in turn. 9.Bite the tip of your tongue. 10.Put your lips into a tube and smile, but without teeth. 11.Pull your lips into a tube and smile broadly. 12.Open your mouth wide and then close it. 13.Open your mouth wide, close it first halfway, and only then completely.
But let me remind you once again that by replacing any exercise with “acting” in front of a mirror, you will give yourself a bunch of emotions and you will do articulatory gymnastics with pleasure.
Exercise 2. Tongue twisters.
Take any a selection of tongue twisters, and start pronouncing them daily, starting at a slow pace and gradually speeding it up, so that you pronounce tongue twisters without “eating” sounds and syllables, gradually the speed of reading them will be fast enough, and the pronunciation will be clear and correct. May this process also bring you pleasure. To do this, you can experiment with a cork from champagne - read tongue twisters with and without a cork clamped in the mouth.
Below is a selection of tongue twisters.
1) The interviewer interviewed the interventionist.
2) Once upon a time there lived three Chinese: Yak, Yak - tsedrak, Yak - tsedrak - tsedrak - tsedroni.
Once upon a time there lived three Chinese women: Tsypa, Tsypa - drypa, Tsypa - drypa - drypa - drypamponi.
They all got married: Yak on Tsypa, Yak - tsedrak on Tsypedrypa,
Yak - tsedrak - tsedrak - tsedroni on Tsypa - dryp - drypamponi.
And they had children: Yak and Tsypa: Shah, Yak - tsedraka with Tsypa - drypa: Shay - sharakh, Yak - tsedrak - tsedrak - tsedroni with Tsypa - drypa - drypamponi: Shah - Sharakh - Sharakh - Shironi.3) Tell us about your purchases! - What kind of purchases?
About shopping, about shopping, about your purchases.4) The fast talker quickly spoke quickly,
That you can’t quickly pronounce all the tongue twisters,
But, having become nervous, he quickly said,
that all the tongue twisters will be repeated quickly, but not too quickly.
And the tongue twisters jump like crucian carp in a frying pan.5) Bankers were rebranded, rebranded, rebranded, but not rebranded.
6) In Cannes, the lions did not wreath wreaths for the lazy.
7) In Kabardino-Balkaria, valocordin from Bulgaria.
De-ideologized, de-ideologized, and pre-ideologized.
9) Sasha walked along the highway and sucked on a dryer.
10) Sasha walked along the highway, Sasha found a sachet on the highway.
11) The river flows, the stove bakes.
12) Tongs and pliers - these are our things.
13) The pike tries in vain to pinch the bream.
14) The train rushes by grinding: w, h, w, shch, w, h, w, shch.
15) You can’t say all the tongue twisters too quickly, you can’t say too quickly
You can also find various collections of tongue twisters in the VKontakte Group and Odnoklassniki.
Exercise 3. Write a short story about the subject or simply describe the subject.
A very interesting exercise. When I made it for the first time, it didn’t seem very simple to me. Many people can describe a simple object with only two or three words, but it is necessary to stretch the description process for 4-5 minutes, without repeating it. Very interesting exercise-develops imagination and logic and associative thinking. At the same time, you learn to avoid junk words, unwanted repetitions, watch your speech. Turn this exercise into a kind of speech energizer and you will certainly get a boost of energy.
Exercise 4. Reading aloud.
Reading aloud is good to practice on works of poetic form. You can use poems from your favorite poets. Try to read the same poem in different ways: with different emotions, for example, or at a different tempo or, emphasizing some part of speech, and you will see how differently the text will play in your performance every time.
Exercise 5. Retelling.
For retelling, it is good to use fables or parables or any genre of prose that you love. Here, practice highlighting key words. You can write them out from the text, they will serve you wonderfully guideline-cheat sheet when retelling. Take any article from a magazine that you like and retell it, for example, adding a particle to each verb that you pronounce during the retelling process. I think you will definitely smile.
Of course, the exercises I have given in this article are not dogma, and I must tell you that in fact there are many different exercises and techniques. But sometimes lies under your feet, which we don’t notice, but the techniques described in this article are very easy to use and you can do it both at home and at work during your lunch break, for example, or while preparing lunch or while walking with your child on the playground. The main thing so that the process of working on your speech gives you pleasure.
Elena Kleimenova was with you. All the best.
What is the difference between a research assistant and a children's animator? The scientist speaks clearly, briefly, correctly, but dryly and boringly. The animator's vocabulary is rich, bright, imaginative, but often illiterate. A bunch of words with diminutive suffixes and incorrect endings amuse children, but are unacceptable for adults. However, if you take only the best from the language of both workers, you will get the perfect syllable. How to improve speech so that it reflects everything - both the erudition of a scientist and the brightness of an animator?
How to improve your speaking technically
Study spelling
The pronunciation of sounds is needlessly underestimated. Together they form syllables, those into words, and the latter into phrases. If just one detail is spoken incorrectly, it can distort the entire sentence. This is fraught with distortion of meaning and misunderstandings.
Fortunately, there are enough textbooks on the Internet that clearly explain spelling norms. Here, for example, are a few rules of Russian orthoepy:
- if a word contains the letter “е”, the emphasis will always fall on it;
- “ch”, “sch”, “sch” and “zch” sound soft in any position (unlike the Ukrainian language, where they are hard);
- adjectives in the genitive case ending in “-ogo”, “-ego” are read as [-ova], [-iva] or [-ava];
- the unstressed letter “o” in the first syllable is read as [a] ([∧]);
- Voiced “b”, “v”, “g”, “d”, “zh” and “z” at the end of words turn into voiceless “p”, “f”, “k/x”, “t”, “sh” ” and “c” respectively.
By studying this topic in detail, you can get rid of the accent and signs of dialect. If you want to speak a foreign language beautifully, you will have to study its spelling rules.
Look at grammar books
Grammar is a branch of linguistics that includes morphology and syntax. This discipline is the core of any language, as it explains most linguistic patterns. By opening the grammar book, you can learn how to:
- correctly conjugate verbs according to persons and numbers;
- correctly inflect nouns by case;
- use modal, auxiliary parts of speech;
- modify verb forms to convey tense;
- combine different language units;
- make sentences correctly.
How can a person understand that his speech lacks literacy? If the phrases “play the piano”, “more beautiful”, “while studying the instructions, there was a feeling...” do not cause any discomfort or suspicion, it’s time to urgently take up the grammar of the Russian language.
Work on vocabulary
Grammar is the core of the technical part of speech, vocabulary is its shell. No one will buy the most delicious candies if they are packed in dirty, torn or unattractive candy wrappers. A person may know the rules of language, but be unable to convey the essence of an idea due to a poor vocabulary. And they will lose interest in it - just like in a sweet with an inconspicuous wrapper.
However, it is not enough just to learn a few new words. It is better to also ask them:
- direct meanings;
- figurative meanings;
- emotional coloring;
- frequency, demand;
- scope of use;
- degree of intelligibility for others.
If you dig deeper, delve into the history of lexemes, you can learn a pun - a funny play on words.
A rich vocabulary allows you to communicate without hesitation or awkward pauses. It makes it possible to convey thoughts more accurately, vividly, avoiding misunderstandings. Such advantages help in career advancement and other ascensions.
Learn to express thoughts correctly
In this case, you will need not just knowledge, but skills that help you use this theory. What is needed is logic that develops:
- subsequence;
- abilities for analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction;
- specification (absence of “water”, highlighting the main thing);
- tendency to laconicism;
- outlook, its breadth and versatility;
- comprehensive information;
- the ability to avoid linguistic and semantic tautologies (repetitions).
The consistency of the information makes it useful to listeners. They begin to listen to the opinion of the interlocutor and consult with him. Logic creates trust, a feeling of reliability and confidence. At the same time, it is not necessary to become Sherlock Holmes or a private detective and show the subtlest manifestations of deduction. It is enough to develop your skills to the level at which they will help in communication.
But you can find out how to “revive” your speech, breathe soul into it, in the next section of the article.
How to develop speech artistically
Use epithets
Epithets are expressed mainly by adjectives. They make speech more expressive, but it is better to use them wisely. Some tips:
- do not use more than 2 (at most 3) tropes in a row;
- avoid overly exaggerated, “theatrical” words (“the most beautiful snow”, “universal gratitude”);
- make sure that adjectives agree with nouns;
- avoid repetitions (“there was a beautiful vase on a beautiful tablecloth”);
- select the most striking epithets for the main subjects or personalities of the story.
Since these tropes are figurative, they can be experimented with. Their use is combined with the author's conjecture and creative flight of thought. However, logic in the selection of epithets is still important. Another proof that the connection between the technical and artistic parts is indestructible.
Build vivid images
Epithets are not the only means of filling speech with expressiveness. Frequently used figures also include:
- metaphor - a figurative, often hidden comparison, transfer of meaning (“snake’s gaze”, “the sun laughs”, “the sky embroidered with a cloudy pattern”);
- oxymoron - inconsistency (“voice of silence”, “hot ice floe”, “good villain”);
- antithesis - opposition (“strangers roam on our land”, “love and hatred”, “black lace curled on a white dress”);
- hyperbole - exaggeration (“an all-powerful man”, “she is not just a problem, she is a natural disaster”, “rummaged through a ton of papers”);
- litota - reduction or softening (“light as a feather, ballerina”, “wasp waist”, “a huge dog suddenly seemed like a puppy”).
Direct comparisons are less expressive than the listed paths. However, they force listeners to imagine concrete images, which makes the information easier to understand.
Develop a sense of humor
In almost every circle of friends there is a person who always has a couple of jokes or everyday stories in stock for all occasions. If at the same time he has charisma, he is doomed to be the life of the party.
An adequate sense of humor allows you to select appropriate jokes for any event. It does not accept vulgarity, cynicism, sarcasm where all this can cause harm. Even “black humor” has a right to exist if it is used among understanding people and does not affect anyone’s interests or feelings. For this level you will have to work on charm, wit and slight self-irony.
Fall in love with psychology
To discover a psychologist in yourself, you don’t need to get into someone’s head or develop hereditary extrasensory perception. It is enough to use attentiveness, ingenuity and a little imagination. How to use psychology techniques in a conversation:
- skillfully create intrigue (prepare a surprise or describe something without naming the object itself);
- mention in a conversation facts from a topic of interest to the interlocutor;
- establish contact (catch the eye, make sure that the listener is following the facial expression, gestures of the narrator);
- unobtrusively direct the conversation in the right direction (“His project is good. It is logical and simple. True... There is a missing detail. By the way, using the example of my work, I can demonstrate how to create and use such a “zest””);
- check the degree of interest by observing whether the interlocutor repeats the speaker’s movements (unconsciously).
Recommendations on how to improve your speech set the direction. Their completion will take more than one day. This is a colossal job that requires constant development. Surely at first at least one piece of advice will be difficult to give or even seem impossible to implement. However, if you clench your will and don’t stop halfway, success will not be long in coming.
Speech is considered one of the important functions of a person, and thanks to it, it becomes possible to communicate with other people. Clear and correct speech remains the key to self-confidence, and problems in diction or pronunciation of words often become the cause of complexes and complicate the communication process. In preschool age, a child’s full communication is one of the indicators of his readiness for school, and in adults it can contribute to career growth.
It is possible to improve diction with the help of special exercises for speech development, which you can perform independently at home. In fact, the right phrases and a well-trained voice are the result of a person’s long-term work on himself. It is for this reason that such exercises must be performed constantly, and not occasionally, since only under this condition will it be possible to achieve the desired result.
Important: Setting aside a few minutes during the day to practice improving diction allows you to achieve good speaking skills and change your voice beyond recognition within a month.
Parents need to know which exercises develop figurative speech, and which ones help improve vocabulary and grammar.
In childhood, play is considered one of the best options for improving speech. Experts recommend using games that help develop a child’s vocabulary, develop his logic, and help improve his communication skills. Everything in childhood can be divided into the following types:
- Games and exercises aimed at developing hearing. If a child has problems distinguishing words by ear or replaces them with others, then in the future it will be quite problematic for him to imagine the appearance of the word itself. exercises allows you to quickly cope with this problem, and the most effective are games aimed at developing hearing:
- invite the child to name words that begin with a given letter;
- when listing words, the baby should clap his hands if he hears a word that begins with a certain letter;
- invite the child to listen to the story and answer which words are mixed up in it;
- It is necessary to change the sound in a word in such a way as to create a new word.
- Exercises to develop vocabulary. In fact, the quantity of vocabulary and its quality largely depend on the level of development of speech as a whole. Parents should definitely pay attention to the child’s passive and active vocabulary. It is important that the child is able to operate with various concepts and apply them in independent active speech. The following exercises for speech development in children help to acquire such a skill or improve the skill:
- come up with as many words as possible that represent flowers, trees, animals, etc.;
- for each given word it is necessary to come up with a specific action (blizzard - sweeping, sun - shining, and others);
- you need to compare objects by taste, color, duration and height;
- invite the child to come up with endings for words or sentences;
- It is recommended to guess as many riddles as possible about animals, birds, trees, flowers, etc.
- Games to develop grammatical skills. With the help of such exercises it is possible to develop and improve the grammatical structure of the language. Exercises to develop coherent speech will help the child not only compose simple exercises and complex structures, but also understand the sequence of actions in the text:
- guess the end of the phrase;
- come up with a sentence from a given set of words;
- guess which words are lost in the text;
- correct the sentence;
- make up a story based on the picture.
When a child moves to the senior group, he must correctly pronounce all the sounds of his native language. In addition, it is necessary to actively work on the development of phonemic hearing and correct articulation. You can get rid of porridge in your mouth with the help of, which is recommended to be discussed with your parents. In addition, the development of a child’s speech at 4 years old through exercises and special games allows him to establish communication with peers.
How to develop adult speech with exercises
You can improve an adult’s speech, improve his intonation and voice at home with the help of special exercises:
- Breathing training. It is recommended to pronounce the main sounds while exhaling, and try to hold them out for as long as possible. You can take a short breath and try to count to 10 as you exhale.
- Tongue Twisters. It is recommended to start with simple tongue twisters, constantly complicating and improving them. In addition, you can put nuts in your mouth and pronounce the words. With constant performance of such exercises, the technique of pronunciation of complex combinations will soon improve noticeably.
- Articulation exercises for adults. You can alternately rest your tongue on your cheeks with your mouth closed or open, and also move your jaws back and forth.
If a person swallows syllables when speaking, then you can start chanting poems.
Rules for performing the exercise
To produce correct speech when performing exercises, you must follow the following rules:
- You need to do articulation gymnastics 4-5 times every day;
- each exercise must be performed 5-7 times;
- when choosing an exercise, you need to go from simple to more complex;
- It is best to start articulation gymnastics with lip exercises;
- a child or an adult must clearly see their face and control whether the exercises are performed correctly.
Important: games and didactic exercises for speech development, when carried out regularly, help to quickly correct existing defects and improve diction.
Use of aids: games, music, etc.
Fiction is an important source of speech development for any child. At the same time, its impact is largely determined by the child’s level of speech development. Despite this, in the early stages of work it is difficult to overestimate the role of fairy tales in the development of a child.
All kinds of art, which acts as a stimulator for language acquisition, have a positive effect on the development of speech. It is recommended to carry out verbal interpretation of works of various genres as often as possible and supplement them with discussion with children.
Many consider competent speech to be a talent that is given to a select few and is necessary only in some areas of activity. In fact, everyone should think about how to develop speech. After all, good diction makes you listen to the person speaking and trust his opinion more. In addition, such a skill often contributes to career growth, especially if performing job duties requires frequent communication with people.
Basic techniques and exercises for speech development
Below we present the most effective exercises to improve your diction. Clear speech and a well-trained voice are the result of long and hard work on oneself. Therefore, it is necessary to perform these exercises regularly, and not occasionally, because this is the only way you will make progress in the development of your speech.
Warm-up for the articulatory apparatus
Before performing any exercises aimed at developing diction, short warm-ups will help you to prepare yourself for clarity of pronunciation. One of her options is to tightly clench a pencil with your teeth and say a phrase approximately 10-15 words long. Then take out the pencil and say the same phrase again. In order not to think about choosing a text every time, you can use any poem when performing this exercise.
Exercises aimed at improving their mobility and accuracy will also help you begin to speak better and strengthen the muscles of the organs involved in the speech process. After all, these are the characteristics that are required for the development of diction and high-quality pronunciation of sounds.
As you know, the most mobile organ of articulation is the tongue. Therefore, most of gymnastics is connected with it. There are many exercises, the regular implementation of which will eliminate the need to think about the question of how to develop speech. For example, you can stick out your tongue and try to reach it first to the chin, and then to the nose. Or, as if using a brush, use smooth movements to draw lines from the teeth to the larynx.
Pronouncing phrases with artificially complicated articulation
Tongue twisters for developing diction are considered a classic training option. With their help, you can practice clearly pronouncing different consonants in a calm environment. To achieve excellent results, it is enough to devote at least 5-10 minutes to exercise every day. However, to develop good diction there is one important rule: each phrase must be pronounced at a slow, medium and very fast pace.
You can start training with the simplest sentences, which teach you to clearly pronounce one or two sounds. For example, these could be:
There are also more complex phrases that help you understand how to learn to speak words clearly and quickly, in which the pronunciation of two or more sounds in difficult combinations is practiced:
- The talker said to the talkers: “I said, don’t tell the talker that the talker has started talking,” the talker has a talker. The talker began to speak, and the talker’s throat began to talk slightly, and then the talker said finally: “Stop talking, talker talker.”
- The commander spoke about the colonel and about the colonel, about the lieutenant colonel and about the lieutenant colonel, about the lieutenant and about the lieutenant, about the second lieutenant and about the second lieutenant, about the ensign and about the ensign, about the ensign, but was silent about the ensign.
- There is firewood in the yard, firewood behind the yard, firewood under the yard, firewood above the yard, firewood along the yard, firewood across the width of the yard, the yard cannot accommodate firewood! We'll probably move the wood from your yard back to the wood yard.
- The cap is not sewn in the Kolpakov style, the bell is not poured in the Kolokolov style, the cap needs to be re-packed, re-capped, re-forged, re-capped.
- The snake was bitten by the snake. I can't get along with the snake. From horror it has become narrower - the snake will eat it for dinner and say: “Start over.”
Pronouncing tongue twisters
There are also special tongue twisters for developing diction and eliminating problems with the pronunciation of certain sounds. A good way to figure out what exactly needs to be corrected is to listen to your own speech from the outside. Once the problems have been identified, you can begin to work on developing your diction.
First you need to learn how to pronounce an isolated sound correctly. Then it is necessary to achieve differentiation in speech of similar sounds, for example, “s” and “sh” or “r” and “l”. A significant help in correcting your speech can be pronouncing special phrases, for example:
- Lara played the lyre.
- Forty mice walked and found forty pennies, and two poorer mice found two pennies each.
- The Ligurian traffic controller was regulating in Liguria.
- A Cossack with a saber galloped towards Sashka to play checkers.
- Sasha walked along the highway and sucked on a dryer. Beavers wander into the cheese forests. Beavers are brave, but they are kind to beavers.
- The bull is blunt-lipped, the bull is blunt-lipped, the bull has a white lip and is blunt.
- There was a white-winged ram, which killed all the rams.
- I was at Frol’s, I lied to Frol about Lavra, I’ll go to Lavra, I lie to Lavra about Frol.
You should move on to working on the next sound only after you have achieved the correct pronunciation of the first sound.
Reading aloud
In addition to speaking tongue twisters, it is also useful to read aloud to develop diction. Recording your voice on a voice recorder can be a good incentive. Few people, having heard their speech, would not want to improve it. By reading passages from books and making audio recordings, you can practice your pronunciation until it becomes almost perfect.
How to learn to speak so that it is really pleasant and interesting to listen to you? When reading aloud, avoid monotony and change your intonation. In addition, it is worth changing the volume and speed of reading, learning to highlight the most important points with pauses. But at the same time, control your speech so that such pauses are appropriate and not too long.
Also, do not lose sight of the fact that a calm and confident voice is best perceived by others. Whether he will be like this largely depends on the mood and internal state of a person, his ability to control emotions. However, by developing diction, you can learn to speak calmly and convincingly. For example, why not imagine yourself as a politician and talk about the state of the economy in the country while sitting in front of a mirror?
Vocabulary expansion
Another important aspect that needs to be taken into account is the need for constant intellectual development and vocabulary replenishment. A well-developed person can carry on a conversation in any situation and find the right words. To become just like this, you should read more, solve crossword puzzles more often and attend various trainings on.
If you devote even a few minutes every day to working on improving your diction, within a few months you will begin to speak well, and your voice itself will be transformed beyond recognition. Moreover, all the efforts made will undoubtedly be rewarded over time.
Diaphragm training
In the question of how to deliver a speech, a very important aspect is the ability to control breathing. Without it, the text may be interrupted by pauses and breaths in places where this violates its meaning or worsens its emotionality. As a result, speech will become abrupt, and the meaning of what is said is perceived worse.
Therefore, one of the first exercises to develop diction should be training to develop proper breathing:
- Place your feet shoulder-width apart, straighten your spine, place one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach. Inhaling through your nose, push your stomach forward. Then calmly exhale air through a small hole in your lips, returning your chest and stomach to their original position.
- To start speaking better over time, you can make the exercise more difficult. To do this, try to maintain proper breathing and at the same time walk, run in place, imitate chopping wood or sweeping the floor.
- You can improve the development of diction with the help of the following exercise. To begin, inhale calmly, and as you exhale, hold out any vowel for as long as possible. When you can hold a vowel for more than 25 seconds, try changing the tone of your voice.
Main causes of speech problems
It is impossible to achieve positive results in the development of diction if you do not understand the causes of speech disorders. Only rarely are they associated with health problems and develop, for example, due to an abnormal jaw structure or a short frenulum of the tongue.
For many people, speech problems are caused by incorrect pronunciation of whistling and hissing sounds, as well as the absence of the “L” or “R” sounds, or a violation of their pronunciation. A weakened articulatory apparatus may also be the cause.
Even if a person can speak well, pronouncing all sounds correctly, in particularly significant situations his speech may become slurred and unclear. After all, when pronouncing words, the articulatory apparatus needs to very quickly switch from one movement to another. This can only be achieved through active and intensive work of the muscles that need to be trained, for example, by regularly pronouncing tongue twisters for diction.
However, the main reason for slurred, quiet speech is a person’s shyness and lack of self-confidence. In such a situation, the development of diction is a secondary problem. First of all, you need to work on your own character and fight complexes.
If you swallow most of your words when speaking, or people around you can't understand what you're saying, you can try to improve the clarity of your speech. Here are a few ways you can speak more clearly, whether you need to give a speech, your profession requires public speaking, or perhaps you just want to improve your communication.
Steps
Don't rush while talking
- Public speaking often makes people nervous. If you find yourself feeling nervous and in a hurry, try to remind yourself that everything is fine and you need to slow down. Breathing correctly will help you stay calm and analyze your words.
- You should also remember that people want to hear what you have to say. Your words matter, so give them a chance to be heard and understood.
- The human ear is capable of picking up words very quickly, provided that you pronounce each word completely before you begin to pronounce the next one, because in this way you leave sufficient pauses between words so that everyone can understand you correctly.
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Swallow excess saliva in your mouth. Saliva remaining in the mouth can cause words to be swallowed and distorted pronunciation of consonants such as “S” and “K”.
- The moment you swallow can not only allow you to clear your mouth, but also give you the opportunity to pause and breathe again.
- Choose the moment to swallow saliva when you have already finished a sentence or thought, but not in the middle of a sentence. This will also give you time to prepare to say your next sentence.
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Speak up. If you need to speak publicly or give some kind of presentation, then perhaps you will at least write down the content in general terms. Practice pronouncing it while walking.
- Some actors use this technique to memorize their lines, as getting up and moving will help you remember what you need to say. Practice your speech and say one word at each step.
- It may seem difficult and slow, but by saying one word at a time, you will learn to slow down your speech. You don't need to speak this slowly in your speech or normal conversation, but feeling comfortable using a slower tempo will improve the clarity of your speech and allow you to take your time later.
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Repeat those words that are difficult to pronounce. When it is difficult to pronounce certain words, we often begin to rush and stumble over those words, resulting in unclear, jumbled speech. Practice pronouncing these words by saying them out loud over and over again until you develop muscle memory of how to sound them correctly.
Improving your diction
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Practice tongue twisters. Tongue twisters are a great way to improve the clarity of your speech, and mastering them will allow you to learn how to keep your speech clear and confident. Many actors and speakers practice tongue twisters before going on stage to warm up their voices.
Read aloud. If you're reading a book, or even just the morning newspaper, practice reading it out loud. This will help you become more familiar with how your voice sounds. Very often, when we talk to others, we hear ourselves in a completely different way from what our voice actually sounds like. Reading aloud in the comfort of your own home will help you listen to yourself and pay attention to those moments when your speech becomes unclear.
- You can also record your voice and listen to it, along the way, noting where you mumble or speak unclearly.
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Practice talking with a plug in your mouth. Many artists and voice actors do this exercise to improve their clarity of speech and diction, especially when reading something like the works of Shakespeare. When you put a cork under your tongue and begin to speak, you will force your mouth to work very hard to fully pronounce each syllable, and the cork will also prevent your tongue from stumbling on certain words.
- This exercise can tire out your jaw muscles, which will help you learn to relax them, but you don't want to do this for too long or your jaw will hurt.
- You can also use a napkin if you produce a lot of saliva during such exercises.
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Pay attention to intonation. Tone of voice also plays a big role in speech clarity and diction, as it can affect how you pronounce certain words.
- Are you giving a speech that should move people? They may have a hard time understanding you if you say it in a monotone or expressionless voice.
- Your intonation, whether you're excited, didactic, or casual, will make people pay attention to your speech and can also improve your clarity.
- Intonation when speaking depends entirely on the pitch of your voice. Pay attention to how high or low your voice sounds.
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Don't use rising intonations in your conversation. This nasty habit of speaking with a rising intonation makes your voice sound like you're asking a question.
Training your muscles
- Make wide chewing movements while humming something under your breath.
- Stretch every muscle in your jaw and face. Open your mouth as wide as possible (as if you are about to yawn), while at the same time making a circle with your lower jaw and moving it from side to side.
- Open your mouth wide, as in the previous exercise, and close it. Repeat this 5 times.
- Using your lips pressed together, try to make a buzzing sound, but do not clench your jaw.
Exercise your jaw muscles to improve your speech clarity. To make your speech much clearer, relax your jaw with a few exercises.
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Watch your posture. Just like breathing, your posture plays an important role in the clarity of your speech, and this is something that we often forget and don't take into account.
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- Even if you don't sing, you can hum a few notes or simply hum to yourself. Also try singing your tongue twisters.
- Say “Uuuuu...” several times, raising and lowering your intonation. Imagine that your voice is like a Ferris wheel, going up and down in a circle.
- Make a buzzing sound and pat your chest. This will help remove any phlegm that may collect in your throat.
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- Say “YEE” – pull the corners of your lips back and say “Eeeeeee...”.
- When talking to the other person, maintain confidence and remain relaxed. This will help you speak more clearly and clearly.
- You may feel strange or even a little embarrassed doing some of the exercises mentioned, but the more you practice, the easier and more effective the results will become.
- Say "Ah" - (as in "Arkansas" - drop your jaw down).
- Say the following sounds, emphasizing them strongly:
Aa her oo ee oh
Kaa kee koo kay ko
Saa shi soo sei so
Taa chii tsu tey to
Naa nii noo nai no
Haa hee ho hey ho
Maa mi moo mei mo
Yaaa eee eoo yaay yo
Raa rii roo rai ro
Waa vee voe vee voe. - Another exercise is to write a few sentences on a piece of paper, then underline the last letter of each word. As you read the sheet, exaggerate the sound of the last letters, then pause for a few seconds. You can also use commas between more words to slow down at that point.
- Demosthenes, a Greek thinker, practiced putting pebbles in his mouth to wean himself from stuttering. It's worth trying this with something clean, safe and edible, like cookies or ice cubes. Just be careful not to choke.
- Practice pronouncing vowel sounds and adding consonants to them, for example, “paa pau po poo pei pii pai, sou so suu say sii say...”
- Get all your thoughts out of your head and think about what you are going to say so that you forget about the anxious thoughts. This helps with public speaking.
Warnings
- When working your jaw and mouth, be careful not to overdo it or you will get injured. If you feel pain, you need to relax your facial muscles a little.
Control your breathing. Listen and watch a singer on stage and you will see how much attention he pays to his breathing. If Mick Jagger didn't know how to breathe properly, he wouldn't be able to run around the stage singing his song "You Can't Always Get What You Want." The same thing happens when speaking, so proper breathing can greatly improve the clarity of your speech.
Take your time when talking. Speak slowly, but don't be so slow that you appear robotic.