How to improve diction and clarity of speech: 5 effective exercises

Hello dear readers! Lyudmila Redkina is with you. Take your time, you are walking along the embankment and a lebenak approaches you. He shouts: “Auntie/uncle, mother, how I am doing!” Give me some kaaku!” Which means: “Aunt/Uncle, watch me play! Give me some candy!” It’s probably unusual for you to read such words, right? And hearing them is even more fun! Today we’ll talk to you about how to improve your diction and clarity of speech, so that there won’t be something like this: “password”, “do you have a muse? - but I don’t have a muse, that’s such a bad thing in life!”, “girl, huh?” do you like Kafka?, – yes, especially Grefneva…” and so on.

COMPLETE LIST OF HUMAN SKILLS

Why do you need good diction?

First, let's figure out what diction is and why we should care about it.

Diction is a clear, clear pronunciation when a person pronounces words and phrases clearly and legibly. A person with good speech does not “suffer” from a lisp, nasal tone, or stuttering.
Good diction is not a requirement only for TV presenters and teachers. Everyone needs it in life and everyday life. We all get a job, communicate among our circle of acquaintances, we don’t know, in the end, where we will be “taken”, where and with whom we will interact.

A very striking example of a person with “good” diction was from 2021 to 2019 in the Supreme Council of Ukraine - A.V. Parubiy. Everyone who could laugh at his speech, because it’s not often that you hear a SPEAKER (from the word “speak”) of a country’s council with such diction! This is exactly what I mean: we need to take care of improving the quality of speech now, learn to speak beautifully, so as not to make people laugh later...

YouTube channels

Sometimes a good theory must be supported by practice. In voice production, it is also very important to clearly understand what is required of you. Therefore, I have prepared several YouTube channels where you will see lessons on vocals and speech training. You will understand how to breathe using the example of a video with a teacher, and learn other vocal nuances.

Vocal Academy
John Kalligan
Vocal Zen / Vocal Lessons
Nikolai Fokeev Vocal School / Vocal Lessons
Voice Workshop of Sergei Vostretsov

Exercises to improve diction and speech clarity

Philologists have studied the issue of the development of diction and come to the conclusion that many people need to improve the articulation of speech of the Russian-speaking population. This is due to the fact that the Russian language is distinguished by “lazy” articulation, unlike English, for example.

There are even certain ways to check if you have good articulation for clear speech:

Take a mirror and, looking into it, pronounce vowel sounds (a, o, i, e, u, s). Do your lips change position and shape? If they move well and change shape, then you are on the right track.
Tongue mobility is important for good articulation. Roll it up into a tube. If it does not work out, it is due to muscle weakness or a congenital feature. But you can develop!
It is also important to open your mouth well. To check this, prepare your palm without the thumb. Then open your mouth as much as possible, slide 4 fingers inward between the upper and lower jaw. If you managed to do this, then your mouth opens without clamps, which means the muscles are ready to work.

So, we’ve sorted out the diagnostics, now let’s decide what to do to develop speech and improve articulation. I present to you several effective exercises to help you achieve your goal.

Warm-up

Take a pen or pencil between your teeth and say any sentence or phrase of 10–15 words. In this case, the pencil must be squeezed as hard as possible. Then take out the stationery object and say the phrase again. You will hear the difference immediately! The entire articulatory apparatus will be tuned to correct speaking, precise and accurate.

It is enough to warm up with a pencil for up to 5 minutes before exercises; this exercise is necessary to “pump up” the articulation muscles.

You can also warm up with nuts. Demosthenes in Ancient Greece developed a unique method of training speech with stones. On the seashore, he picked up a mouthful of stones and shouted words into the stormy sea, trying to pronounce them clearly. Practicing with nuts does almost the same thing. You put them in your mouth and try to pronounce the speech-improving words as best you can.

Warm up with a pencil

Tongue Twisters

At home, you can perfectly improve your speech pronunciation, because everyone has pencils and access to tongue twisters. This is the minimum set of articulation development. But let's move on.

Tongue twisters are used for children aged 4–6 years. This is a very effective way. Tongue twisters are also used to improve the diction of adults; below I will write the most effective of them. In addition, with such phrases you improve not only your speech, but also your vocabulary. Select the tongue twisters you need, just focus on working out all the letters and their combinations.

Listen to a recording of your voice

Oh, I don’t really like listening to my records. I remember how I once heard my childish and funny voice on the recorder, and I was saying quite serious things... I and all my friends laughed at the recording.

But for the development of clear and competent speech, listening to your voice on a recording is a very useful activity. Almost every person will want to change it, work on diction. You need to do it this way: you take some passage from the text, then clearly try to read it, recording it on a voice recorder. If you didn’t like the entry, repeat reading. And so on until you perfect your pronunciation.

The same can be done to improve your English speaking. You can also bring in a good friend who speaks English to listen to an “expert” opinion.

A prerequisite is diaphragm training.

For vocalists and people who stutter, the diaphragm is a condition for success. Who would have thought that some kind of bridge over the stomach determines a lot of money in show business! But for correct speech and singing, mandatory training of this very diaphragm is necessary. A trained diaphragm makes it possible to finish a phrase and finish singing it.

You can train it this way: take a deep breath, then draw out the vowel sound until there is no breath left at all.

When you reach 25-30 seconds of this “pulling”, change the pitch of your voice, try to draw out the sound in a thinner voice.

When and under this condition you stretch the vowel to 25-30 seconds, proceed to inflating balloons. It’s good for your body, and you’ll please those around you! Well, jokes aside, inflating balloons very well develops the diaphragm and increases lung volume.

Combination of different sounds

In addition to tongue twisters, correct speech and diction can be achieved using special combinations of sounds. These combinations use consonants and vowels. By repeating them 5 times, you practice diction. Well, competent speech is added by the experience of reading different books (I’ll give a list below). What combinations will be useful:

bgi-pki, bga-pka, bge-pke;
vzdri-fstri, vzdro-fstro, vzdry-fstro;
stri-ztri, stra-ztra, stro-ztro;
gkru-khkru, gkro-khkro, gkra-khkra, etc.

Features of voice production

After chanting and taking these precautions, it’s time to decide why exactly you need to improve your voice. The rest of the recommendations will depend on this.

For singing

Singing is music. Therefore, when setting your voice, you need to focus on the melody, so that the sound flows and does not jump along a bumpy road! Imagine that your body is an instrument and your vocal cords are a transducer of air into sound.

The main highlight of the voice when singing is vibration.

You can quickly achieve your desired singing voice only after achieving vibration. How to feel it? Take a deep breath, then start speaking. Try to relax, and the sound will go smoothly, easily, vibrating a little.

Be sure to use a chant and then a warm-up: to sing correctly, you need to breathe correctly. We will talk specifically about breathing exercises below, and warming up will help you relax and sing beautifully.

Warm up. Stand up straight, place your palm on the diaphragm (this is between the solar plexus and the stomach). Exhale completely so that there is no air left, then inhale very slowly and deeply. At this moment, try not to raise your shoulders, but breathe through your stomach so that it moves, and not your shoulders and chest. This warm-up is also a coronavirus prevention!

Breathing warm-up
To sing, you need a musical instrument at home or a special program on your smartphone. Starting from the note “do”, begin to sing the scale: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do. Then down in reverse order. Try to breathe correctly from your stomach so that your diaphragm rises, not your shoulders.

For proper singing, breathing, range (how many notes you play), and freedom of voice are important. Well, if you want to sing in a popular voice, then you need to form the correct direction of the air stream in your mouth: cover your mouth a little and direct the air to the upper palate, and the sound should fly from the tip of the tongue. With this style of singing, you need to maintain the intonation of each vowel sound.

And it is in folk singing that the openness of sounds is most encouraged; even “a” and “o” are sung approximately the same. It is very good to sing and learn to sing with folk songs, since they are very similar in articulation to ordinary spoken language.

For public speaking

During public speaking, a person spends a lot of energy; not only the tongue and lips work, but the whole body. Therefore, when staging a voice specifically for public speaking, it is important to warm up the whole body first. This is our instrument, haven’t you forgotten?!

So, what needs to be done when staging a voice for the stage and pulpit:

Warm-up is a must! To do this, we jog with our arms and legs in turn. We stretch up, raise our shoulders and lower them. Tilt your head to the right and left. Try to yawn - cause a yawn: open your mouth wide, strain your entire speech apparatus to feel it.
Get into a comfortable position. But at the same time, make sure that your spine is straight, your shoulders back, your head should be kept level: do not lower or throw back. This is important for your confidence and the freedom of your voice. Tilt your head forward and see how your voice changes! It’s no wonder that famous speakers stand up straight and behave confidently on stage.
Make sure your speech is loud, but not shouty. Resonators help create a velvety loud voice. To check their operation, stand up straight, put your hand on your chest, sing the sound “a” - if there is vibration in your chest, the resonator is working. When the chest resonator operates, the voice becomes low and velvety.
If you need a squeakier, higher-pitched voice to perform, stand up straight and place your hand on your throat. Extend the sound “a” - if the neck vibrates, then this resonator is working. The voice becomes weaker and higher.

Here, too, it is important to practice every day. Read a work by your favorite writer or your report in front of the mirror. Try speaking with different resonators, change the volume, intonation, but do not overstrain the ligaments.

For voice acting

When voicing roles or imitating the voice of another person, you need to change the type of your voice. If you are faced with such a task, it is important to understand what exactly needs to be changed for voice acting:

Pitch – try not to sound monotonous, it is important to switch to high and low notes to make your voice sound expressive. But! If you have a high voice, and you are going to record it using amplification devices, try to make it lower - it will be more beautiful. High tones are greatly distorted and unpleasant to the ear.
Volume depends on the volume of air in the lungs. If there is a lot of air, you will blurt out all the information very loudly and people will jump in their chairs. Therefore, adjust the air flow if you need to say something quietly, and “turn up the gas” if you need to pay attention to something.
Audibility depends on the room. If you need to voice a role in a small room, you don’t have to strain yourself too much. But if this is a theater, then the rules of proper breathing, as when singing, the flow of air in the mouth, and the pitch of the voice work 100% here.
Expression – helps speech become more expressive. Try to draw pictures in your mind to express emotions along with information. Get used to hearing emotions and reading texts expressively.

For men

Voice production for men differs with resonators. Men often use the chest resonator, which makes their voice more rich, bass, velvety, and beautiful.

To be popular, many try to make their voice lower, because we are not used to meeting men with squeaky voices - it somehow doesn’t listen. But there are also representatives of the male half of society. Just remember Vitas...

What you need to make your voice lower:

Relax your facial and jaw muscles.
Relax your neck muscles, smoothly rotate your head in different directions, accompanying this action with a sigh.
Tilt your head to the side, relax your jaw, open your mouth slightly and yawn deeply, deeply, gently stretch your mouth to its maximum.
Then yawn in the same way, only with your head tilted forward.

These exercises will help relax the vocal cords and muscles of other organs, and this will help produce a low male voice. By the way, this is how the announcer’s voice is staged, only diction exercises are also very important there.

For women

In women, the head resonator works more when the voice takes high notes. It is important here not to strain your vocal cords or squeak. The head resonator is often called falsetto - this is another type of singing when the edges of the chords work. This is a bit of a misnomer, since falsetto is a type of head resonator (very high notes).

It is easier for women to hit high notes, and the transition of the resonators is practically not audible to the viewer when the transition is correct. It is important to develop range, and this is achieved by warming up and chanting.

Recommendation from the author of the blog – Pavel Butor

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The most effective tongue twisters for improving diction in adults

I wrote above about the importance of tongue twisters for the development of ideal diction for an adult. I will only note that after recording your voice, you must decide which speech sounds do not suit you. Perhaps it will be hissing or “l-r”, or other sounds. And in accordance with your observations, select tongue twisters that work specifically on them. And for prevention, you can train them all.

The Ligurian traffic controller regulated in Liguria.
The protocol about the protocol was recorded by the protocol.
Don’t smoke, Turk, pipe, better buy a pile of peaks, better buy a pile of peaks.
The angry widow put the firewood into the barn: once firewood, two firewood, three firewood - all the firewood could not fit, and two woodcutters, two woodcutters, for the emotional Varvara, expelled the firewood across the width of the yard back to the woodyard, where the heron withered, the heron withered, the heron died .
Just as you can’t ring all the bells, you can’t beat them again, you can’t beat all the tongue twisters, you can’t speed them up, but trying is not torture.

Well, something easier.

Tell us about your purchases, about which purchases, about your purchases, about your purchases, about your purchases.
The bull was blunt-lipped, the bull was blunt-lipped, the bull's white lip was dull.
The pig snouted, white-nosed, blunt-nosed, dug up half the yard with its snout, dug, dug.
Advertising for grips has seams with coverage, but potholders without coverage have been snatched up.
In the shallows we lazily caught burbot, in the shallows we caught tench.
Their pesticides are not comparable to ours in terms of their pesticide effectiveness.
We ate and ate ruffs at the spruce tree, we barely finished them off.
Appreciates the flail cut by the braid.
The hedgehog has a hedgehog, the snake has a squeeze.
From the clatter of hooves, dust flies across the field.

Tongue twisters are good for developing memory and attention in adults, in addition to speech.

Tongue twister to improve diction

Ventriloquist

Close your lips. And start actively pronouncing the text. Any.