How to learn to speak beautifully and express your thoughts correctly

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.

What does it mean to “speak beautifully” and why is it important to learn it?

We all want to communicate freely with other people, easily convey our thoughts to them, be able to interest the interlocutor and look decent in his eyes. This helps us achieve a certain level of success and become popular.

Let's describe a well-delivered speech:

• leisurely;
• easy, without long awkward pauses and unexpected hesitations;
• it does not contain profanity or filler words;
• the narrative can be called meaningful;
• accompanied by moderate gestures and facial expressions;
• sounds emotional, not monotonous.

The ability to speak clearly, consistently and convincingly will be useful in all areas of life and will help out in any situation. Whether you are a professor at an institute or a teacher at school, a businessman, a sales manager - with the help of speech you can attract the attention of the audience or get an important contract signed.

The art of eloquence is useful to any person. It allows you to influence people, control their actions and actions, and charge the audience with your energy and mood. Ultimately, having mastered this art, you will easily become the life of the party, be able to speak brilliantly in front of people and successfully negotiate.

For a speech to sound beautiful and convincing, the speaker himself must be an energetic, educated, well-read and self-confident person. Only in this way can he captivate the audience, inspire trust and sympathy, penetrate human souls and motivate people. And it’s good if a person knows how to develop charisma. Then listeners will certainly want to make their secret dreams come true and begin to take active action.

But this is the emotional side of the issue. It is often discussed at various motivating and inspiring trainings, where they teach how to become a leader. However, sometimes a person simply needs to deliver a clear, intelligible, confident speech with a competent and logically structured narrative. It includes the following required elements:

• diction (clear pronunciation of sounds);
• pace (the ability to speak slowly or quickly, without slowing down or chattering);
• voice volume;
• intonation;
• literacy;
• rich vocabulary;
• purity (absence of parasitic words);
• accuracy (use of the most appropriate words to express thoughts, structured narration without “water”);
• expressiveness (metaphors, comparisons, synonyms, figurative expressions and other linguistic means).

A person begins to develop speaking skills from birth. Parents constantly communicate with the child, read fairy tales to him, teach him poetry - all this contributes to the formation of correct and beautiful speech. But an adult will have to develop his speaking skills on his own.

Simple rules for parents of preschoolers

Parents should be as involved as possible in the process of developing speech clarity. Otherwise, the child will never learn to speak clearly.

• Babbling and lisping should be avoided.
• You cannot speak to a child using his abbreviations: “bo-bo”, “am-am”, “pi-pi”.
• You need to learn poems, but correctly selected according to age. The verse should not contain complex words. If you overload a preschooler with them, his articulation apparatus will quickly get tired, which will lead to the consolidation of errors in words.
• You should monitor your speech and ask to repeat the words several times until they are pronounced correctly.
• When the baby looks at the lips and movement of the adult’s tongue, this helps to consolidate correct articulation.
• You need to use appropriate exercises, games with a specialist or on your own at home.

Working on speech technique

Form and content are the main aspects that characterize speech. The form represents the technical side of the issue. These include: diction, voice volume, speech rate. Content means semantic content, i.e. correctly formed thoughts, well-structured speech, ability to lead a discussion, rich vocabulary. For a speech to sound beautiful, it must be thoughtful.

Working on speech skills is a fairly lengthy process. It includes the following areas:

• diction training;
• practicing speech techniques;
• speech development (increasing vocabulary, clearing parasitic words).

Diction training

Diction is the correct and clear pronunciation of sounds. If you have problems in this area, you can identify them in one of the following two ways:

• independently, using a voice recorder of the conversation;
• with the help of a pronunciation specialist - speech therapist.

In the first case, you need to read aloud an excerpt from the text (it is better if it is the text of an audiobook spoken by a professional actor) and record it on a voice recorder. Then listen to the recording, compare it with the actor’s and highlight the shortcomings. To be safe, let someone else close to you listen to this recording. Let them share their opinions too. This will help you identify diction flaws that you will have to work on in the future.

In the second case, I advise you to contact a speech therapist - a specialist who diagnoses and corrects speech defects in people of different ages. Basically, parents whose children have difficulty pronouncing words most often turn to a speech therapist. It is at preschool age that it is easiest to get the correct pronunciation. However, you should not be embarrassed by a speech therapist if you have not been a child for a long time, and problems with diction have not gone away.

The most common diction disorders:

• burr;
• lisp;
• stuttering;
• fuzzy whistling sounds;
• “swallowing” individual sounds, etc.

Regular classes with a speech therapist will help you quickly establish correct pronunciation and consolidate it.

Systematic training of the speech apparatus is also important. Be sure to do the following exercises at least once a day:

• perform articulatory gymnastics;
• read poetry or prose aloud, pronouncing each sound clearly;
• speak tongue twisters.

While saying tongue twisters, place nuts or candy behind your cheeks. It will most likely be very difficult to understand what you are trying to say at first. But gradually you will overcome the resistance, and the pronunciation will become clearer. This exercise is regularly performed by announcers and actors.

Practicing speech techniques

To make your speech sound beautiful, in addition to diction, you still need to work on its elements.

1. Intonation . With its help, speech becomes “alive,” emotionally charged and expressive. Reading aloud with expression is a great way to practice. Read plays as if you were performing on stage, trying to express the emotions of the characters as believably as possible.
2. Rate of speech . The speed of pronunciation greatly influences how your interlocutors perceive what you say. Speech that is too slow puts people to sleep and people lose the thread of the conversation. And the too fast pace forces you to listen intensely to the conversation in order to catch the main idea. As a result, the listener has to ask again.
3. Volume and strength of voice . It is very important to learn to control the strength and volume of your voice so that during a conversation you do not whisper or scream. It is usually advised to speak 30% louder than usual, as if you want to be heard by the person standing behind the interlocutor. By the way, most people involuntarily begin to speak louder, especially when they meet friends or acquaintances on the street.
4. Volume of voice . Volumetric is called a “chest” voice, which sounds as if from the chest. It is deeper, more sonorous, stronger and more pleasant. The following exercise will help you achieve a voluminous voice: place your hand on your chest and pronounce the vowels “a”, “u”, “s”, “o”, “e”. As you speak, you will feel a vibration in your chest with your hand. Try to strengthen it. To achieve the effect, perform this exercise daily for 5-10 minutes.
5. Breathing . During a conversation, try to breathe calmly and measuredly. Then the voice will sound confident, the timbre will become softer, and the speech itself will be calmer. If you breathe too quickly and intermittently, your voice will sound weak and unsteady. Proper breathing can be learned through special practices.

Let's take a closer look at one of the most common mistakes related to pronunciation - too fast a speech rate. When a person jabbers, it is very difficult to perceive him by ear. In addition, in a hurry to tell everything as quickly as possible, he begins to swallow individual words, and in general he may blurt out too much.

To stop chattering and swallowing words, you need to learn to control the pace of the conversation. Proper breathing will help a lot here. Before you say anything, try to take a moderately deep breath, calm down and think that you have absolutely no hurry. To practice speaking speed, you can say out loud at a slow pace, for example, a sequence of numbers from 1 to 100. The more often you practice, the faster you will get used to speaking slowly.

Do vocal exercises

For greater effectiveness, such exercises should be done in front of a mirror.
You can start such exercises by yawning, this helps to relax the vocal cords. Then move your jaw left and right. Don’t forget to massage your throat with your fingers while humming a sound. After the exercises, you need to take a deep breath and exhale slowly, combining this with pronouncing the letters of the alphabet, until you feel the tension in your abdominal muscles. Next, hold your breath for 10-15 seconds and try to stretch out any sound until the volume of your voice completely decreases.

Speech development

More and more people cannot formulate sentences correctly, do not know the meanings of many words, and abuse filler words and profanity. I think this is mainly due to the fact that most people prefer to watch TV or go to the movies instead of reading an interesting book. But you and I are not like that. At a minimum, you are already reading this article, and I am writing it for you. Therefore, we continue to develop speech.

Correct sentence construction

It is very difficult to understand a person who, during a conversation, jumps from topic to topic, tries for a painfully long time to find the right words and cannot form sentences correctly, depriving his story of logic.

But the order of words is of great importance. This is taught at school during Russian language lessons. Due to incorrect word order, the meaning of the sentence is distorted and may even cause laughter. Let me give you a few examples of semantic errors.

1. Residents of the house demanded troubleshooting and repairs (What did the residents demand? Make repairs or eliminate them?).
2. The owner kicked the dog, which immediately took offense and ran away (The leg got offended and ran away?).
3. A few years later he met her again. This was, unfortunately, a 39-year-old married lady (Is it a pity that she is already 39 years old? Or that she is married?).

To avoid such mistakes in a conversation, I advise you to do the following:

• improve literacy with the help of Russian language textbooks and reference books;
• Read at least 30 minutes every day - preference is best given to fiction, journalism, and special books on development.
• retell what you read - just be sure to check how consistently and logically you repeat the text.

Increasing vocabulary

A meager vocabulary does not allow one to fully express thoughts, forcing a person to constantly stumble in search of the right word. Such speech sounds choppy and monotonous, because the same words are used, and overall produces a repulsive impression.

Regular replenishment of vocabulary will be ensured by the following actions.

1. Read quality literature daily. Be sure to get yourself a notebook where you will write down your favorite phrases and clever expressions. At the right moment, the right quote will come to mind and embellish your speech.
2. Working with an explanatory dictionary. As soon as you come across a new word, be sure to check its meaning in a dictionary. You can write down the word and try to remember it, but only in context, in order to avoid incorrect use of the term in the future.
3. Solving crosswords, scanwords and other games that require an extensive vocabulary.
4. Selection of synonyms. This is great practice for completing a thesaurus and will help you avoid tautology when speaking. Now there are various applications for smartphones that help you select synonyms.

Getting rid of parasitic words

Parasitic words include words and phrases devoid of any semantic meaning:

• Well;
• Briefly speaking;
• exactly this;
• type;
• Here;
• as if, etc.

Most often, a person pronounces them unconsciously to fill the pause that has arisen. The insidiousness of parasite words is that their use becomes a bad habit. It can be eradicated only by making conscious efforts. Here are some tips.

1. Record any conversation you have with friends or relatives on a voice recorder.
2. Listen to the recording and identify the filler words.
3. Train yourself to speak a little slower than you are used to, so that you have time to realize the moment when you want to utter a harmful word. It's better to take a short break.
4. Ask relatives, friends and acquaintances to make comments to you as soon as they hear the parasitic word. And so that the motivation of your interlocutors is even stronger and they listen more greedily to your speech, pay them 50 rubles for each “parasite” that slips through. This way you will have better control over yourself, otherwise you will go broke.

It will be difficult at first. After all, eradicating a bad habit requires enormous effort, powerful self-discipline and control. It will take 2 to 3 weeks of hard work to clear your speech of “slag.”

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...

Speech training

The best exercise for speaking is quality speaking practice. Someone who just talks a lot doesn't always talk really well. Strive to ensure that during any conversation your speech is coherent, thoughtful, and reasoned. Dialogues are good for building a logical train of thought. Discuss with friends the books you read, the movies you watched, and various events.

Here are a few recommendations that will help you with your speech.

1. Read and retell . I have already written that reading helps to enrich vocabulary, develops memory and thinking. By retelling what you read, you will better understand and remember the material, learn new words and phrases, and various figures of speech.
2. Write . If you need to speak in front of an audience, be sure to write down your speech on paper. Re-read it, see what else you can add or remove, whether the logic is broken, whether there are any semantic errors. Remember that the best improvisation is a well-rehearsed one.
3. Watch performances by famous speakers . But not with the goal of motivating yourself, but to analyze the performance. Notice all the important details: how the speech is structured, how the speaker moves, what are his gestures, facial expressions, timbre of voice and pace of speech. If a speech particularly resonates with you, try writing it down on paper from memory. Then imagine yourself speaking in front of a large audience and read your speech out loud. Record your performance on camera. Review it, noting mistakes and points that need to be worked on.

As you can see, there are no special secrets in delivering a beautiful speech. To achieve a good result you need to work on yourself and constant practice.

Finally, I recommend watching a video in which a radio host and speech technique teacher shares the secrets of good diction.

Tongue Twisters

Tongue twisters are one of the simple and effective ways to improve speech clarity. Start by saying simple tongue twisters, such as:

• Merchandisers lied - samovar sampling was disrupted!;
• De-ideologized, de-ideologized, and pre-ideologized;
• He reported, but didn’t finish his report; I completed my report, and I did.

Then move on to more complex tongue twisters. For example:

The fast talker quickly said quickly, That you can’t quickly talk all the tongue twisters, but you can’t over-speak all the tongue twisters, But, having quickly spoken, he quickly said, That you can’t talk all the tongue twisters, but you can’t over-speak.

Once upon a time there lived three Chinese: Yak, Yak-tsedrak, Yak-tsedrak-tsedrak-tsedroni. Once upon a time there were three Chinese women: Tsypa, Tsypa-drypa, Tsypa-drypa-drympamponi. They all got married: Yak to Tsypa, Yak-tsedrak to Tsypa-drypa, Yak-tsedrac-tsedrac-tsedroni to Tsypa-drypa-drympamponi. And they had children. For Yak and Tsypa - Shah, for Yak-tsedrak with Tsypa-drypa ​​- Shah-sharah, for Yak-tsedrak-tsedrak-tsedroni with Tsypa-drypa-drympamponi - Shah-sharah-sharah-shironi.

Your goal is to learn how to pronounce all sounds correctly and as clearly as possible, and not just scribble tongue twisters at a frantic pace. First, speak the tongue twister slowly, assessing the sound pronunciation, then gradually increase the tempo each time. When you achieve perfection in this technique, you can complicate the task. Before pronouncing the next tongue twister, put a few walnuts in your mouth.

How to develop a behavior strategy against manipulators

Such people are needed in order to better understand themselves, learn about their vulnerabilities, and become stronger. Taking advantage of their “hint”, we will try to build a defense, develop a different line of behavior so that they cannot be taken by surprise.

1. When a manipulator wants to lead you into a conflict situation, do not fall into the trap. Look at what is happening as if from the outside. This will give you the opportunity to think about whether it’s worth getting into trouble.
2. You must clearly understand that you are dealing with a provocation. If, after communicating with a person, every time you feel confused, offended, wounded, and want to run away from him, you have a real manipulator in front of you.
3. The manipulator respects only his own opinion and tries to impose it. Is it necessary to enter into conflict with him? No need, because that’s all he wants. Mentally protect yourself and show detachment, especially if the provocateur begins to piss you off.
4. It is more difficult to deal with work colleagues, because they most often act behind your back. Such a strategist may spread gossip in order to advance in his career. He has many goals. It is better to stay away from such a person, but not to lose sight of him. This way you can avoid his snares.
5. There are also “power seekers” who, through “good” intentions, want to maintain power over you. Their ability to find vulnerable spots is very great. But they have a great sense of who can be controlled and who cannot. They will not touch people with a strong psyche, and they will try to keep the weak in submission. Don't let them get too close to you, keep your distance from them.

Behavior strategy

When faced with a manipulator, know that his goal is to throw you off balance. In order not to become an object of manipulators, you need to develop a behavior strategy:

• Ask him directly: “Do I understand correctly that you are provoking me to…”;
• Calmly, without nerves, say: “I don’t like that you discuss my mistakes in front of everyone”;
• Often they do not understand any arguments, so remain calm in any situation. A recommendation will be very helpful here: count to 10 or take 5-6 deep breaths. This is difficult to do when everything is boiling inside, but it is necessary. This will calm our thoughts, which means we will be able to deceive the expectations of the provocateur. And this is what is required. Perhaps he will fall behind and switch to others!

Do you have to please everyone?

No, don't. It's better to be yourself than to try to please everyone. If a person wants to please everyone, he begins to say flattering words. Because of this desire, a not very pleasant impression may be formed about you.

Faina Ranevskaya once said: “It is better to be a good person who swears than a quiet, well-mannered creature.”

Be simpler, more natural, this will quickly inspire trust and freely express your thoughts. Your speech should not repel, but hold the attention of your interlocutor.

The medical side of the issue

Speech defects such as burr or lisp may be associated with congenital diseases. And these shortcomings are the first thing that needs to be eliminated in order to develop speech. Therefore, before you become interested in how to develop beautiful speech, you need to visit a speech therapist to eliminate possible defects. On our website you can find out answers to questions - how to stop lisp and how to stop burr in more detail.

Sometimes the patient is prescribed a surgical operation, after which the person will be able to use his speech with maximum efficiency. After eliminating all physical obstacles, you can already think about how to improve your speech and make it varied and exciting.

How not to give in to provocation

There are so many verbal provocateurs around us, just have time to dodge them. Verbal provocateurs can be not only strangers, but also relatives. The favorite pastime of provocateurs is to make people emotional, so that they themselves become the ruler of people who have been driven to irritability.

Provocateurs are capable of manipulating people, depriving them of sane reasoning, suppressing it morally, forcing them to constantly worry and make excuses. It is a great pleasure for them to induce a feeling of guilt. With the help of verbal provocation, they can find out any information, even other people's secrets.

A provocateur can easily lead a person to action, even at the risk of life. There is great power in their “skillful hands,” but there are ways to learn to resist them.

How to protect yourself from provocateurs

Such individuals know our weak points and take advantage of it. How to recognize a provocateur? The personality watches you too closely even during a seemingly friendly conversation. Her eyes just light up.

Observing, the provocateur immediately notices what exactly can upset you, confuse you, confuse you. Their joy will know no bounds if they succeeded. They will do this as long as our inability to resist them dominates us.

This means we need to find methods so that they give up all attempts to manipulate. But manipulators will not put up with this, but will begin to look for new weak points. They do not want to lose their superiority; they prefer to always be the master of the situation.

Can you build sentences?

Even if a person knows many different words, but has difficulty constructing sentences, then listening to him is boring and uninteresting.

To learn how to construct sentences, retell movies and books more often to friends or to yourself. Watch your speech patterns, do not pour water, speak briefly but clearly.

Add emotions, watch your friends' reactions. If your story is bad and uninteresting, then their attitude towards your story will immediately be reflected on their faces.

To become an interesting conversationalist, this technique will help: write down in your diary your impressions of a movie you saw or a story you read. Do this as often as possible until you like the sentences you use to express your thoughts. Make sure that parasitic words: “like”, “this”, “so to speak” disappear forever from your vocabulary.

How to develop diction and clarity of speech with the help of training

School of speech technique and voice production @LABVoice includes 6 main blocks:

1. Speech breathing.
2. Working with diction, articulators, resonators.
3. Manipulation, intonation and expressiveness of speech.
4. Self-presentation, improvisation and speech logic.
5. Speech therapy exercises.
6. Public speaking, fear of speaking, discomfort in communication.

The training was developed by Maria Savicheva, an expert in speech technique and voice production (more than 20 years of experience).

Suitable for people who:

• a quiet, expressionless, unconvincing voice;
• there is misunderstanding on the part of colleagues and relatives;
• difficulties with pronunciation, sluggish, unclear diction, sore throat, loss of voice;
• relationships with the opposite sex do not work out;
• no career growth;
• They don’t listen, they interrupt, they don’t give a chance to speak in company.

1,273 students were surveyed after classes. Of them:

1. 100% have become more confident in themselves.
2. 84% began to earn more.
3. 100% strengthened leadership skills.
4. 94% felt much sexier and more attractive.
5. 88% no longer have stage fright.

This is 100% online learning. More than 7,000 participants have already completed it.

How the training works:

1. First you will conduct a Voice and Speech analysis. Receive personal recommendations and additions to the course program.
2. Follow video lessons and strictly follow the expert’s instructions.
3. Interim analysis of voice and speech with program adjustments.
4. Final voice analysis with an expert’s conclusion and further recommendations.

For 249 rubles. You can get a voice test right now. Then they will create an individual program for you depending on your results. The price of training will depend on this (3,500–26,900 rubles). You can pay immediately or in installments over 4 months.

The training time is approximately 1.5–2 months.

If you don't like the training, you can get your money back within 14 days.

You can also get access to a free trial lesson for 5 days.

Also, if you want to powerfully improve your voice, I recommend taking courses at the Ostankino Show School.

First, you will pass a test and get into a free casting.

On course:

1. Improve diction, articulation, eliminate speech defects.
2. Learn to dub films, cartoons, podcasts, YouTube videos.
3. Improve your acting skills and voice intonation.

At the end of the training you will receive a diploma and assistance in finding orders.