How to develop diction and learn to breathe correctly?

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Irina Rogava

Lifehacker podcast host, public speaking coach.

How to improve diction

If you have significant speech defects (lisp or burr) and they do not suit you, contact a speech pathologist. A competent specialist will correct them in a few sessions.

If there are no outstanding defects and you just want to speak beautifully, exercises for articulation will help.

Articulation is the work of the organs of speech, as a result of which we can pronounce sounds. There are only three articulation organs that can be trained - the lower jaw, lips and tongue.

Here are the simplest exercises for this:

• For the lower jaw: talking with a pencil. Take a regular pencil and bite it with your teeth - you need to place it after the incisors. To understand whether it is lying correctly, you need to pronounce the sound "p". If you can do it clearly, then the setting is correct. Talk like this for two minutes.
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• For lips: smile. Stretch your lips in a smile for two minutes. Slowly at first, then increase the pace.
• For the tongue: injections. Tighten your tongue and inject your cheeks. 10 times one way, 10 times the other. Tongue twisters also help to improve diction. The coolest can be viewed in our compilation.

How to develop breathing

It is necessary to develop breathing so that speech is even, smooth, without unnecessary noise - deep breaths interrupting a sentence, loud exhalations, grunts.

Breathing through the nose is considered correct. First, it's more natural. Secondly, it is more aesthetically pleasing: breathing through the nose is not so noisy. Also, remember that proper breathing is diaphragmatic.

The diaphragm is the muscle between the chest and abdomen. When you breathe through your chest, the sound is volumetric and deaf. With diaphragmatic breathing, the voice is richer, more voluminous, with a confidential intonation.

Various techniques for developing breathing can be found in this article.