How to develop diction and clarity of speech

According to rhetoric, clarity of speech is important not only for public speaking, but also for everyday communication, work, and learning. If a person or child has poor diction, they have difficulty speaking with others. Slurred speech makes it difficult for listeners to understand information, so it is very important to pronounce words correctly and clearly. This will make life much easier and lead to success in work and study. Diction training helps develop sound pronunciation. It includes a set of measures that improve the condition of the organs of articulation and improve the quality of sound pronunciation.

How to develop speech and learn to speak beautifully

Reading books

Reading books will help you learn to express your thoughts correctly. They will replenish their vocabulary with new, and sometimes even outlandish words.

Use dictionaries

They will help you see where to put the emphasis correctly and tell you the meaning of unknown words.

In order for your public speaking to be successful, you need to work out in advance what you want to convey to the audience. A little plan will help with this. You can write it down on paper by adding a few keywords. There is no need to read the entire text from the sheet, this will make the speech dry, lifeless and unemotional. It will be difficult for listeners to perceive.

Improving diction in children

The main difficulty for children when pronouncing complex words is the rapid change of articulatory position, when it is difficult to rebuild the speech apparatus depending on the subsequent changing sound. Before you start working with your child directly on diction, you need to conduct speech gymnastics aimed at improving articulation.

Carry out exercises to develop the muscles of the speech apparatus:

Make the sound A with your mouth wide open. The child must imagine that he is speaking into a megaphone.
Make the sound O, stretching your lips as far as possible.
Exercise “Smile”, when the child stretches his mouth wide, pronouncing the sound I.
Make the sound U, extending your lips into a tube as far forward as possible.

Breathing exercises help set up your speech apparatus before reading texts for diction. It is necessary to teach the child to distribute breathing correctly:

on a deep breath, pronounce the syllables: “house”, “bom”, “out”, retaining the air until the end of the pronunciation, distributing it to each word;
blow out an imaginary candle, but slowly, gradually blowing out the air;
pronounce sentences, at the beginning of the first word, take an imperceptible deep breath, distribute it until the end: “They found a pair of boots and 12 galoshes on Tamara,” “Mom loves Masha, and Masha loves mother.”

It is necessary to move on to reading texts after an articulatory warm-up. Spend at least 15 minutes on the preparatory stage. Speech therapists, when working with preschoolers and schoolchildren, advise using poetry and humorous texts so that the learning process is not a burden. While reading, it is important to monitor correct articulation, clear pronunciation of each sound, and voice placement. Diction training for children is carried out using the following texts, following the main rule: from easy to complex.

Read the text, clearly pronouncing the sounds: sh, zh, h, shch, ts:

“The black lapwing, not bored, chirped over a cup of tea. The hedgehog has a hedgehog, the grass snake has a snake. If you want to eat rolls, don’t sit on the stove. Well done against the sheep, and against the well done the sheep itself. Sasha walked along the highway and sucked on a dryer. Two puppies are nibbling grass in the corner, cheek to cheek. The student was studying his lessons, his cheeks were covered in ink.”

Read the text slowly at first, watching the pronunciation of individual sounds, and then speed up the pace.

The rhyme amuses the children and makes the process of working on diction interesting. You can work additionally with this text: give the child the task of reading it sadly, cheerfully, angry, laughing, restrained, calmly, loudly, quietly. It is good to train individual sounds: ch, r, k, s, asking the child to highlight them intonationally and articulatorily when reading.

Speech therapists use texts with pictures in practice for preschoolers and schoolchildren. They not only help improve diction, but also stimulate the development of memory, attention, imagination, thinking, and logic.

When working with preschoolers, the teacher (parent) reads the text, the child looks at the picture, continues the sentence, pronounces intonationally and clearly all the necessary imitative words, exercises in the process of reading a fairy tale, and repeats after the adult. The student can independently read a fairy tale and complete assignments. An adult only monitors the clarity and correctness of speech.

Exercises to help develop speech

They will help people at any age, no matter if they are a first-grader or a man in adulthood.

Find a speaker whose speech you like . You should listen to and analyze several of his speeches. So you will notice what techniques he uses. The most suitable ones should be taken into account. Just be sure to test them when communicating with friends. This way you will see whether they work in your case, and correct your speech if necessary.
Communication with yourself. When no one is around, try to prove something to yourself. Argue a little, putting forward different theories. This will help you quickly find the necessary words and thoughts when communicating with others.
Make up short stories . Take 5 different words as a basis. Then make up a short story with them. This exercise develops logic and trains imagination.

Exercises and techniques

For an adult, it is important to speak beautifully and coherently. And in order to develop this skill, to improve your speech, you need to constantly work on yourself. The following exercises will help you master the skill:

Expanding vocabulary. Choose a short prose text that you like. Arm yourself with a Russian language dictionary and a dictionary of synonyms. Your task is to replace words in the text with synonyms. Instead of words, you can choose phrases and catchphrases. At first, try replacing only adjectives, and over time move on to other parts of speech.
To develop logic and intelligence, work with keywords. To do this, select a small text and, without looking, point your finger at some word in it. This can be absolutely any part of speech that carries a semantic load. In this way, define 5 keywords for yourself. Use your imagination and logic and come up with a story or story using keywords. At a later stage of training, you can choose more keywords.
To develop confident speech and give it the right emotional coloring, work with the text from the previous exercise. Stand in front of the mirror. Read your text without emotion. Then give it an emotional twist that seems appropriate to you. At the same time, watch your facial expression. Would it be appropriate if you were telling the text to someone? Work with multiple emotions. Read the story with joy, sadness, embarrassment, disappointment, and any other feelings you can remember.
Use a voice recorder. You need to record your voice four times. The first two times you must read a poem and a prose piece with expression. You cannot read the third and fourth times; you must recite the same works by heart. Evaluate your speech according to two criteria: whether you like it and whether others would like it. You should speak from memory as confidently and with the same expression as when reading. Work with this exercise until the speech seems perfect to you. If you have problems memorizing a poem, then read our article - how to learn a poem quickly and easily by heart.
This exercise will effectively improve the speech of an adult. But to complete it you will need a partner. As in one of the previous exercises, select 10 keywords from your favorite text. Using these words, you have to conduct a dialogue with your interlocutor. The task is considered completed if the adults’ remarks are not strained, the conversation is easy and relaxed, and both partners are able to speak coherently and beautifully. You should feel that the conversation is interesting to you.

These are tips on how to make your speech beautiful and learn how to maintain any conversation. In order for these exercises to bring even greater effect and be easy to perform, it is advisable to first perform actions before them to warm up the muscles of the tongue, face and breathing. Diction exercises for stage speech will help us with this. Very effective activities are also described below.

What to consider when communicating with others

Record your casual conversations with friends on a voice recorder. This trick will show you the mistakes you are making. More often it is:

Parasite words . Frequently used words for connecting speech, such as “in short,” “as if,” “probably,” indicating indecision, reduce the significance of what is said. Try to remove slang and jargon from your speech. Do not shorten the words, pronounce them in full. And most importantly, remove obscene language from your speech.
Fast speech . Speech without pauses prevents listeners from concentrating on what is being said. Many phrases come out crumpled. If among the listeners there are people with hearing problems, then half of them will not hear at all.
Mangling words and incorrect stress. Pay attention to how others pronounce words. If you put an accent somewhere else, check yourself with a dictionary.

Inappropriate facial expressions and gestures will also distract people’s attention from speech. They should emphasize what they are saying, so there is no need to wave your arms too much or smile excessively. Movements should be smooth and the face should express calmness. Practice in front of a mirror. Pay attention to your posture. The back should be straight and the shoulders should be turned. This will convey confidence, which will attract listeners to you.

Read further: What can gestures tell us? 75 Signs of Body Language

Making a stage speech

It is often difficult for an adult to speak due to weak tongue muscles. To eliminate this problem, you need to perform exercises until the root of the tongue feels tired. Accordingly, the muscles will become stronger.

Imagine that you are holding a piece of your favorite fruit or berry in your mouth. Start pressing the treat into the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Imagine what it tastes like to you.
Close your lips tightly. Lick the outside of your teeth with your tongue until you feel tired.
Open your mouth, stick out your tongue. Gradually begin to lightly bite it with your teeth along its entire length. Do this for about a minute.

The following exercises for speech development in adults are aimed at warming up the facial muscles:

Pull your lips out, then immediately smile as wide as possible. Do 10-15 reps.
Stretch your lips with a tube and rotate them, first clockwise, then counterclockwise. Do 15-20 reps on each side.
Mentally divide your face into 2 halves by drawing a vertical line. First, try to move the muscles of one part of your face until it is completely tired. Then move on to the second half.

Now you should understand how to breathe correctly. To do this, stand up straight and place your hand on your stomach. Inhale the air slowly. The stomach should stick out. If you breathe from your chest, your belly will stay in place. You need to learn to breathe using the diaphragm, and your stomach must move at the same time.

From now on, when you develop speech through exercises, always make sure that your breathing is correct.

Tongue twisters as an aid to the speaker

How to improve speech without diction? No actor or speaker has yet been able to do this. Therefore, you need to work on your diction. For this purpose, reading or pronunciation of tongue twisters by heart is suitable. Any tongue twisters that you can find will do; you can use the popular tongue twister “once upon a time there were three Chinese.” Here is also an example of one of the most difficult:

“In the shallows we lazily caught burbot and exchanged the burbot for tench. Wasn’t it me you sweetly begged for love and beckoned me into the mists of the Liman.”

It is advisable to memorize tongue twisters so that you can practice at any time of the day and anywhere.

How to develop diction and clarity of speech

To develop diction and speech, you need to enroll in rhetoric courses. On the Internet you can simply find a huge amount of advice from psychologists that can help you establish contact with others and set your listeners in the right mood. You can also find suitable books. All this, plus practice, will help improve public speaking.

Exercises to develop diction

To get good diction you need to practice. These exercises will help you with this:

Breath. Take a deep breath into your lungs and chant the vowels as much as you can. At first, breathing will only last a little, but after a while the duration of singing can reach 20 seconds. To adjust the pitch of your voice, breathe as if you were trying to blow out a candle.
Tongue Twisters. They combine different sounds, so they will help you not mumble, but pronounce words clearly. To enhance the effect, you can put several nuts in your mouth.
Articulation exercises. With your mouth closed and then with your mouth open, touch the tip of your tongue to your left and right cheek. Then open your mouth wide and move your lower jaw back and forth. Smile widely and open your mouth, run your tongue over your teeth, as if counting them.
For more exercises to improve diction and clarity of speech, see here.

You should practice the exercises for 10-15 minutes a day. You need to move on to the next task only after the first one has been completed correctly.

How to develop your speech and vocabulary

Every person has words in their vocabulary that they use every day. He knows others, but rarely uses them. Therefore, every morning, take three words from the dictionary and use them throughout the day . After six months, your speech will be unrecognizable.

When reading a newspaper or an article from the Internet, stop and retell what you read close to the text . Then re-read the text again and pay attention to the unused words. Repeat them several times to remember them. Also, tell your friends in detail about the movie you recently saw, with emotions. If you complete it in 20 minutes or more, and there are no special problems with the retelling, then you have achieved success. If not, then keep working.

Always try to read out loud. Looking through the text with our eyes, we may not remember new words, but when they are pronounced, they remain in memory for a long time.

Memorize poems or passages from your favorite books. This way you will remember new words that you will involuntarily begin to use in everyday life.

Also start writing . Let it be short stories about hedgehogs or about a summer trip, or even simpler, correspond in detail with friends on social networks. When writing, try to use words you rarely use. Write colloquially; you don’t need to try to impress everyone with complex phrases. Write immediately, as you go along, without overthinking your answer. This way you will write your own thoughts, and not ready-made phrases.

Read further: Oratory for beginners: exercises and rules

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The importance of delivered diction for a person

Correctly delivered diction includes adequate pronunciation of words and good condition of the articulatory apparatus. Poor pronunciation is often caused by physiological characteristics, pathology or underdevelopment of the speech organs (shape of the tongue, facial muscles, bite, muscular apparatus of the larynx), and prosthetics. Also, impaired speech function is caused by brain diseases, injuries during life, during childbirth, hypoxia in utero, during labor, as well as other factors.

Even if diction is impaired, a person can improve the clarity of their pronunciation of words. For this, there are special exercises that develop the functioning of the articulatory apparatus. But training diction requires long-term practice, as well as perseverance. The more severe the speech disorders, the longer it will take to eliminate the defects.

Diction development goals:

Achieving understanding of your speech. A person who has slurred speech cannot make the audience understand. Those around you are not able to fully assimilate information, especially those who hear the speaker’s speech for the first time.
An opportunity to make a good impression of yourself.
To attract attention. Information is perceived better if the speaker’s speech is clear and precise. If there are defects, people will not listen to the speaker.

Beautiful words in colloquial speech. Getting rid of banality

The first thing you should do is try to minimize the use of hackneyed expressions and words that you use in your everyday life. For example, a banal set of words like “good”, “beautiful”, “smart”, etc. can be replaced with less hackneyed, alternative options, because for each of them you can select at least a dozen synonyms using an explanatory dictionary.

For example, the word “beautiful”, depending on the situation, can be replaced with “bright”, “elegant”, “luxurious”, “incomparable”, “magnificent”, “delightful”. “Useful” in everyday conversation can easily be used as “beneficial”, “fruitful”, “expedient”, “practical”, “necessary”. Even the simple word “smart” has many synonyms. You should remember and appeal to them as necessary. Here are some of them: “witty”, “resourceful”, “smart”, “good”, “wise”, “smart”.

It also doesn’t hurt to learn some smart words and their meaning, thanks to which you can produce the necessary effect on others:

- Idiosyncrasy - intolerance.

— Transcendental – abstract, mental, theoretical.

— Esoterics is a mystical teaching.

— A truism is a well-known fact, statement or opinion.

— Euphemism is the replacement of harsh, rude words and expressions with more acceptable and soft ones.

— Sophistry is the ability to argue sharply, to skillfully juggle words.

— Eclecticism is a combination of different types of theories, views or things.

- Homogeneous - homogeneous.

- Invective - swearing, obscene swearing.

- Decadence - decline.

- Hyperbole is an exaggeration.

— Frustration is disappointment.

- Discourse - conversation, conversation.

At first, when using smart words to communicate, you may experience some awkwardness in the conversation; your language will seem to get tangled and stumble over “new expressions.” It's okay; a new colloquial form, like a new pair of shoes, should be worn in. After a while, you will, without thinking, choose better synonyms and expressions to express your opinion.

Improving diction in adults

Texts for the development of speech and diction for adults differ from those for teenagers in complexity and volume. Speech therapists advise starting work on clear and correct pronunciation with difficult tongue twisters. Before a speech, any speaker or announcer works on articulation in order to tune the speech apparatus to work. When preparing to read complex texts for diction, it is important to fulfill the following conditions:

when pronouncing a tongue twister, monitor the position of the speech apparatus, it must work: lips, teeth, cheeks, tongue are in active movement;
when pronouncing a pure tongue, highlight a certain sound intonationally (drawn out or louder);
start reading at a slow pace, gradually speeding it up;
monitor your breathing, distribute it, don’t forget to take air in the next sentence.

You need to not only read the texts, but also monitor the correct pronunciation of sounds and the placement of the articulatory apparatus. You can do exercises in front of a mirror to take care of yourself. With the help of texts, they work on the clarity of pronunciation of certain sounds: sh, r, ch, k, s, sch, c, l.

Controlling facial expressions

Eloquence: how to develop this gift that many people dream of? Enriching your vocabulary and retelling texts will definitely help, but you also need to pay attention to exercises that allow you to learn to control your facial expressions.

Standing in front of a mirror, you need to retell any text (artistic, scientific, technical) without emotion, and then repeat it, using facial expressions and gestures. It is also useful to pronounce the same phrase repeatedly, constantly changing the intonation and tempo of speech.

Retelling

How to develop eloquence? Exercises related to retelling texts will definitely help. You need to take a newspaper article, read it carefully, and then present the content of the article in a conversational style. The retelling is repeated several times, the story is supplemented and expanded, enriched with new details, including fictitious ones. Be sure to express your own opinion about the article you read. You can choose a mirror as a listener.

It is important that at least the first ten sentences are coherent, smooth, and without artificial pauses. You also need to learn how to convey the content of the text in a single sentence. Instead of a newspaper article, you can take paragraphs from textbooks and chapters from books. In addition, it is useful to describe the paintings you see, supplementing the description with an assessment of the artist’s skill.

The most difficult task is retelling a text whose topic the narrator has absolutely no understanding of. However, constant training with simple texts will help you gradually master this art.

Replacing words

How to develop eloquence in order to speak freely on various topics? An exercise involving replacing words shows excellent results. Let's say you need to take a short text, and then replace all the verbs present in it with synonyms that correspond in meaning. Similar operations can be done with all words: adjectives, nouns, participles. This exercise leads to the activation of passive vocabulary that a person possesses, but is not used to using.

A similar exercise is composing phrases with words that have opposite meanings. Let's say dry water, a little giant, bitter sugar, a fast turtle, and so on. This has a positive effect not only on eloquence, but also on creative thinking.

Another fun exercise is “deciphering” words. You need to choose a word and then imagine that it is an abbreviation that needs to be deciphered. To begin with, it is best to use short words, then you can move on to more complex ones. Let's say summer - “a gentle raccoon tramples sawdust.” At first, you can ignore common sense, and gradually the “translation” will turn out more and more successful.

Books for the development of eloquence

Please note that the development of eloquence is positively influenced by reading absolutely any books. A book as such is a speech material that contains many lexical, syntactic, logical and rhetorical constructions. All of them can be used by you in practice. Reading books out loud develops speech, diction, memory and improvisational skills (unbeknownst to yourself, you are practicing expressive reading of an unfamiliar text without preparation). In addition, the vocabulary is constantly updated - the most important tool for a speaker.

It is not enough to read books alone to develop eloquence. A good speaker must read all the time, read everything that consists of letters, and read it out loud.

As for “profile” books, our small selection of world-famous works from recognized authoritative authors will help you understand the basic concepts and basics of working on yourself. The selection of books is compiled with the unprepared reader in mind.

#1Heinz Lemmermann “Textbook of Rhetoric”

#2Dale Carnegie “How to speak in public”

#3Larry King “How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere”

Heinz Lemmermann "Textbook of Rhetoric"

A universal guide to modern rhetoric from Professor Heinz Lemmermann at the University of Bremen. The textbook includes a theoretical part, in which the author gives the reader an accessible and detailed understanding of rhetoric as a science in general, and also shares his own thoughts and practical experience. The book further includes a collection of various exercises that both adults and children can practice. The book is more of a teaching aid than an introductory material, and is intended for long-term study.

Dale Carnegie "How to Speaking in Public"

Dale Carnegie is a world-famous American psychologist and teacher, the author of a number of authoritative works on psychology and self-development, as well as the founder of the Institute of Effective Public Speaking and Human Relations. This book was published in 1956, after the author’s death. It represents a kind of quintessence of the writer’s previous works in the field of rhetoric and eloquence. The book is written in simple and popular language, is replete with real-life examples and illustrations, and also contains a number of practical exercises.

Larry King "How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere"

The book by the famous American television journalist Larry King is aimed mainly at overcoming fears of communication. The author's methodology is unique and has been tested many times by the author himself and a group of his assistants. An important difference between the book and the previous two is that it is entirely devoted to communication. The author examines in detail hundreds of situations in which people of different ages and social status experience communication difficulties. The most pressing problems of speech are considered and accessible solutions from the author’s own practice are proposed.

Words that will decorate your speech. Decorate your speech with smart words.

Mercantile - calculating (selfish, petty).
Repression is punishment (punishment, violence). Legitimate - legal. Corsair is a pirate. Goalkeeper - goalkeeper. Incident - incident (case). Preventive - warning. Tactile - tactile. Apogee - the highest point (culmination, limit). Scrupulous - meticulous (pedantic). Charisma - originality (charm, attractiveness). An honoree is an admirer courting a girl (admirer).

Basurman is a foreigner and a non-believer. Aberration is a deviation from the truth, delusion (distortion). Perdimonocle is complete nonsense, God knows what. Transcendent - unknowable (irrational, incomprehensible). Ostracism - expulsion (bullying). Parity - equality (equivalence, equivalence, equality). Test - test. An applicant is someone who applies for admission to an educational institution. Invariant - unambiguous. Klevret - a henchman (accomplice, accomplice). Destructive - destructive. Annexation is a forcible annexation. Matrimonial - marriage (marital). Trendy - fashionable. Proforma is a formality. Apologist - supporter (adherent) exalted - enthusiastic (excited, inspired) synopsis - review.

Moo

Mooing means making the “M” sound. This is a well-known singing exercise and must be done correctly.

When mooing correctly, your lips should itch.

If the inside of your throat itches, it means you need to raise your neck higher.

Errors:

Don't take in too much air.
No need to moo like a cow. This is not at all effective and will not help development in any way.
When mooing and raising a voice, men or women may experience pain in the throat. Stop immediately if these symptoms begin.
During this exercise, do not try to hit any high notes. That is, hum at a neutral volume that does not bother you in any way.
There is no need to strain your facial muscles or jaw. Everything is in a calm, relaxed position, the same as when pronouncing the short sound “M”.

Useful tips

How to develop eloquence? This cannot be achieved by just studying theory, because a future skilled speaker needs constant practice. It is necessary to communicate as much as possible, systematically expanding your social circle, meeting new interesting people. It is also useful to watch the presentations of presenters on TV, attend trainings and evaluate the speeches of speakers. Finally, you need to pay attention to developing your own sense of humor, since a good joke will decorate any story. This can be easily achieved by memorizing funny jokes and watching humorous programs.

A useful device such as a voice recorder will help you evaluate your own achievements. After recording your story, you should listen to it, evaluate the pros and cons. It is possible that the narrator needs to get rid of filler words, because his speech sounds too monotonous or he speaks too quickly.