How to learn to pronounce difficult words. How to learn to speak clearly? Problems and exercises

Many factors can interfere with beautiful speech: physiology, psyche, features of the language you speak, your attitude towards the audience, the purpose for which you are addressing them, and much more. Very often, a lot depends on how you speak, especially if you need an interlocutor to win an argument or convey important information. We decided to figure out what the beauty of speech depends on and how to achieve it.

What needs to be worked on:

1. Speed

Speaking quickly is a bad habit, and for listeners, fast speech can become difficult to understand, which means that communication with you will be unproductive. If it is difficult to listen to the interlocutor, and what he says is not clear, then the most natural reaction is to stop listening.

You need to slow down the pace of speech if you want to be listened to more attentively, and also remember to pause between words and phrases. The pause also gives you the opportunity to take a breath and continue speaking. However, you should not speak too slowly, otherwise it will become difficult to listen to you again, as the speech will become too monotonous. Slow down when you need to emphasize a part of the speech, and speed up when you need to make the speech emotional and convey enthusiasm.

2. Clarity

The most important feature of beautiful speech is clarity. To achieve it, you need to pay attention to each word and pronounce the sounds correctly. Make the most of your articulation. Such attention to phonetics can play a plus for you if there are defects in speech. At first, such speech will seem strange and unusual to you, but soon it will become a habit.

3. Breath

Breathing is the basis of speech, without air you will not be able to make sounds, and how you breathe depends on what your speech becomes when played. Most people breathe too fast, which results in swallowing words, shortness of breath, and interruptions in sound volume.

The basic rule of breathing is that the diaphragm should be filled with air, not the chest. To observe how well you breathe, put your hand on the bottom of the ribs. As you inhale and exhale, you should feel your stomach expand and your shoulders rise. As a breathing exercise, practice deep inhalation, allowing the air to slowly exit. This exercise will help you make proper breathing a part of your habitual life. While speaking long sentences, take a deep breath so that there is enough air until you pause for the next breath. This pause will also allow your listeners to absorb what you have said.

4. Height

The pitch of your voice can make a strong impression on those who listen to you. If your voice is high-pitched or broken, it may give the impression that you are nervous. A moderate timbre sounds more convincing and has listeners. The low voice is prone to persuasion and dominance.

Exercises to improve speech:

1. Vocal exercises

Doing vocal exercises, you can perfectly develop your natural voice. Look in the mirror while you exercise - so you can track the errors in articulation and breathing and correct them.

Start yawning to relax your throat and ligaments, moving your lower jaw from side to side, massaging your fingers in parallel with your throat and trying to sing a sound.

Take a deep breath and slowly release the air, making a sound, until the stomach is completely compressed. Then take a deep breath again and hold your breath for 15 seconds.

Sing the sound "a" first at a natural volume, then quieter and quieter. This exercise can be done with any sound or letter of the alphabet. Use tongue twisters to practice correct pronunciation and speech speed.

2. Reading aloud

In addition to working with volume, pronunciation and pitch, reading aloud is very useful for beautiful speech. Find a text that interests you and read it for yourself. Remember that your posture is as important as your breathing. Stand straight, open your shoulders, do not slouch. Watch for articulation and the speed of pronunciation of phrases. Practice until spontaneous reading sounds satisfying to you. Such skills will be useful to you in everyday speech.

3. Record yourself

Many people don't like to hear their own voice on a recording, but this is the only way to hear yourself from the outside and pay attention to what you are doing wrong, but, on the contrary, what makes your speech special. To enhance the effect of training, you can also use video recording to edit not only your voice, but also facial expressions, articulation, posture and the emotional presentation of your speech.

4. Smile

Speech becomes more pleasant, open and trustworthy if you speak in a friendly mood. Your voice takes on a similar tone when you smile or laugh. Therefore, you should not ignore such a simple rule of beautiful speech as sincere emotions. Of course, not every speech requires a smile or laughter, but in most cases, your disposition to the interlocutor and eye contact with him is already half the battle.

When you meet a person, what do you pay attention to first of all? The way he looks and talks. It's great when a pleasant appearance is harmoniously combined with the ability to clearly and clearly express one's thoughts.

But what if you yourself talk like that? It is necessary to correct the situation, because beautiful speech is not an innate gift, but painstaking work on oneself.

How can you learn to speak clearly?

First of all, in order to hear and understand HOW you are talking, record your speech on video. It does not matter what you will talk about when making this entry - it can be an anecdote, a retelling of an excerpt from a book you are reading, or just a description of your personal experiences. The main thing - when recording your monologue, talk the way you usually do it when communicating with other people.

Then listen to your recording. It's always good to look at yourself from the outside.

If you, after listening to your monologue, are not delighted with your own speech, you should not become discouraged. The situation, or rather speech, can be corrected, you just need to work on yourself. So, learn to speak clearly!

Tongue Twisters

One of the most effective ways to improve diction is to speak tongue twisters.

For example:

Karl stole corals from Clara, and Clara stole the clarinet from Karl
You can’t talk all the tongue twisters, you can’t overexpress.
Clusters of mountain ash burn in the sun, ripples from mountain ash in the eyes of the children.
I'm driving along a pothole, I won't get out of the pothole.
In seven sledges, seven Semyonovs with mustaches sat in the sleigh themselves.

The point here is not to “scribble” tongue twisters as quickly as possible, but to learn how to pronounce all the sounds in them correctly. To do this, the tongue twister is first pronounced slowly several times, making sure to carefully pronounce each sound. Then the pace can be slightly accelerated. If you see that you are starting to cope here, speed up the pace even more.

In order to complicate the task, you can put a few nuts in your mouth and try to pronounce the tongue twister as clearly as if you had no nuts in your mouth.

Sometimes we can not speak words clearly due to the "clamps" in the jaw. To get rid of such “clips”, regularly say the same tongue twisters, but at the same time holding a champagne cork between your teeth.

Poetry

It is also very useful to recite verses by heart - this not only improves diction, but also develops memory. You can start with small quatrains. Of course, it is necessary to tell poems with a couple of pauses, intonations, emotional coloring, etc.

Read aloud

It is very helpful to read aloud. It does not matter what it is - articles from a newspaper or magazine or fiction. The main thing - when reading aloud, try to pronounce the sounds as clearly as possible. And take your time, as if someone is pushing you from behind with a whip.

Mirror

A very good way to practice speech is to speak in front of a mirror. When telling yourself about something, carefully observe in the mirror how your mouth moves. And also pay attention to your facial expression, gestures, posture.

And, of course, in order to be able to correctly express your thoughts, you need to read as much as possible. Preferably good literature, not cheap detective stories.

Work on yourself - and the result will not keep you waiting.

A beautiful and fashionably dressed girl came to the employment negotiations. She was so spectacular that many applicants who were waiting for a call to the manager lost heart, they were sure that they were losing to this lady. However, she did not get the job, because her vocabulary was so poor that she could not even clearly explain how she learned about the vacancy and what attracted her to it. At that moment, she had to regret that she had never thought about how to learn to speak beautifully, she only knew how to look great.

To speak clearly, you need correct diction

It is not enough to look good, it creates only a first, fleeting impression about a person. Much more important is how a person expresses his thoughts. It is with words and the ability to pronounce them that you can present yourself correctly, and for this you need to know how to learn how to speak beautifully. First of all, it is necessary to monitor diction, it should be clear, and not give the impression of "porridge in the mouth." To develop the correct articulation, there are exercises, for example, for some time you need to pronounce the syllables aloud: rli-rla-rlo-rle-rly-rle, pronounce it repeatedly in a row, consonants remain, only vowels change, rli-rli-rli-rli ... and so on all vowels.

All well-known tongue twisters are excellent training, they need to be spoken aloud rather quickly, and the emphasis should be on those that are the worst at pronunciation. They will definitely help if you need to learn to speak clearly. The basis of beautiful speech is proper breathing, for this breathing exercises are done. With their help, the strength and timbre of speech will be formed, they will relieve stuttering and hesitation during conversation. It is a well-known fact that a lower voice is more sympathetic to listeners than a high one, therefore one should not laugh shrillly and sharply, raise the tone in a conversation, this is unpleasant to hear and such a person causes hostility among interlocutors.

Competent speech is the key to success

If the endings are swallowed, the words in the sentence in gender, number and case are not agreed, you should think about how to learn how to speak correctly and competently. First of all, you need to pay attention to such defects:

Missing vowels: yapshla instead of I went
Doubled sounds: beauty instead of beauty
Missed sounds: instead of how much lope
Endings should be pronounced clearly, especially adjectives: small, not small

Competent speech suggests that a person is noble, well-mannered, cultured. And these qualities never go out of style. In 1967 of the last century, psychologist Albert Meyerabian deduced the percentage "7-38-55". It follows from this that more than half, or rather, 55% of the information from person to person is transmitted non-verbally, that is, with the help of posture, facial expressions, gestures, and gaze. A person receives 38% of information paraverbally, that is, in the form of voice and intonation, and only 7% remains for words. This shows that the ability to speak correctly is very important, and not only words have an impact on the interlocutor.

Learning to speak so that people understand

To do this, first of all, you need to do the following:

Speech communication occupies a huge share in human life, therefore, how beautifully and competently a person speaks is very much appreciated. First you need to clearly understand how some words and expressions are pronounced. “To put on a dress” cuts the ear, and the rule is simple: put on clothes, put on Nadezhda. It is also correct to say contracts, not contracts. The word "call" and its derivatives should not feel "stink". There are not many such rules, but they need to be firmly known.

You need to increase your vocabulary by reading, but not tabloid novels and not street reading. A rich lexicon in the works of classical literature. One feels like saying: “Read, comrades, Pushkin and Dostoevsky!”.

With so many enemies, you can't fight like in the gym - just lifting the barbell in several poses. Each of them requires its own approach, that is, either working with different specialists, or independently studying different subjects. Courses stage speech, oratory and others of a similar orientation solve the problem and allow you to learn to speak clearly and distinctly, but in an average and on a general basis. The main work one way or another will fall on your shoulders.

goal setting

Before we go somewhere, let's clarify where exactly we need to go. That is, if you decide to learn to speak clearly and distinctly not from idleness and curiosity, then there must be some kind of motivating factor in the form of a specific inconvenience from speech defects. It is impossible to set a task like “I want to speak well”, this is a blurry goal, and a blurry goal leads to blurry actions. Ask yourself why you need it. For example, "I want to be heard." This is the goal. A person who cannot speak suffers from a lack of attention, because listening to him is uninteresting, difficult and tiring. Such a person needs:

Learn to speak without eating letters, pronounce. Set diction and voice.
Learn to spell correctly. Work out the presentation of information in the optimal form.
Learn to intrigue. Add a certain element of artistry to the speech, learn to keep your attention.

And now, you already know what exactly you have to work on.

emancipation

The main enemy of diction is not speech defects, as is commonly believed. Even a person with perfect speech can instantly lose all its virtues, begin to “mumble”, draw out words, stutter, stutter, “chew” endings and do everything so that the interlocutor does not understand him. This happens, of course, not out of good will, but for purely psychological reasons. It’s not a fact that this will happen to you, just don’t flatter yourself thinking that the whole range of problems can be solved with one tongue twister.

Just being able to speak quickly and clearly may not be enough. The hardest thing is to learn not to lose the skill under any circumstances.

The culprit of slurred speech is called "extra tension." To understand what it is, conduct an experiment right now: try to strain your neck muscles to the limit. Happened? Now list all the muscle groups that have tightened along with the cervical ones. Face, shoulders, arms, chest? But after all the task was to strain only a neck.

The same thing can happen when you are nervous: tension fetters the speech apparatus, it becomes difficult to speak, the voice sounds muffled, the throat dries up. Only the practice of relaxation will help from this, which can be applied situationally and as a daily exercise. There are a lot of variations of this practice, you can come up with your own. One thing remains unchanged: you need to relax the whole body as much as possible, and consciously control the process of relaxation in the smallest details.

Speech apparatus and breathing

One emancipation will not do either, after all, the work of specific organs is responsible for speech, and if they fail, then the result will be appropriate. The intensity, depth and technique of breathing affect sound production, allowing you to speak as loudly and confidently as you like without straining the vocal cords. This is the answer to the question why actors and vocalists do not break their voices, even when they shout louder than usual. It is better to practice breathing exercises competently in acting or vocal courses under the supervision of a teacher, but you can also practice at home. Main tasks:

learn to breathe with the entire abdominal cavity, i.e., take in air not only with the chest or stomach, as is usually done, but fill it with a maximum of free space inside;
put the sound on the breath, i.e. increase the volume due to the free air flow, and not the tension of the ligaments;
learn how to use resonators. Resonators are natural body cavities that reflect and amplify the sound directed into them. They are at three levels - head, chest, stomach.

The work of the speech apparatus is responsible for diction. To accurately pronounce words without special efforts, you need to keep your facial muscles in good shape and constantly engage in articulation. Natural articulation is the process of speaking, so if you talk a lot on duty or like to chat with friends, just start paying attention to the accuracy of the extraction of sounds, and your speech will sound clearer.

Do not be afraid to use a voice recorder, it is in every mobile phone today. On the recording, all the shortcomings of diction will be visible at a glance, all that remains is to make a list and start correcting speech.

Working with speech material

The last one is reinforcement. The goal is to learn to speak slowly and clearly for a long time without failures, fatigue and loss of diction quality, to work out intonations in different turns of speech, and so on. This is done in two versions - with a ready-made dough and improvisationally.

In the first case, find a longer text, such as a large prose passage, and read it aloud. It is important not just to read, but to come up with a role for yourself. I read it as:

sports commentator;
lover Hero;
prosecutor in court;
Lenin at the rally.

Do not restrict your imagination. The second option is the same, but the text is invented on the go. You can comment on a football match with the sound turned off so that there is something to build on.