Speech Skill: Clarity
See a full list of speech skills and definitions.
Welcome to the Speak for Success communication course. This speech lesson, like all the speech lessons in the course, follows a format that explains the speech problem and presents several speech exercises so you can work on the problem. Each speech lesson closes with a homework assignment designed to provide further practice eliminating or correcting the speech problem that you’re working with that particular week. To get the most out of this course, you need to follow the program, working on only one lesson each week and completing all the exercises and homework assignments.
Ready? Of course you are! The speech problem of sloppy enunciation is the topic for this week.
The Speech Problem
For listeners, one of the most irritating speech habits is a speaker that doesn’t enunciate clearly. When you don’t bother to pronounce each syllable of each word properly and words get slurred together, you sound uneducated. Worse, your listener has a hard time hearing you – especially if there’s other noise around you or when you’re speaking on the phone.
Dropping “g”s is one of the most common examples of poor enunciation. Say this list of words out loud:
- Going
- Walking
- Jogging
- Thinking
- Striking
- Selling
Did you say “go-ing” or did you say “go-in”? If you said “go-in” (or “walk-in”, “jog-gin”, etc.), you’re a G-dropper.
Be warned; this was not a fair test. Pronouncing words in isolation is very different than what we normally do when we speak.
Say these sentences out loud:
- I’m going to have to rethink that bid.
- Waiting to hear back from the bank is very nerve-wracking and stressful.
- Before starting my business, I looked at a lot of different business opportunities.
- There’s more to learning than just reading, writing and arithmetic.
Did you drop any Gs? Did you enunciate each syllable of each word?
Speech Exercise: The Mirror Face Test
A mirror is a great aid when you’re working on your enunciation. I call this the face test. When you’re enunciating properly, your mouth, tongue, lips and jaw move.
Stand in front of a mirror and watch yourself while you say, “I’m going to have to rethink that bid”. See how your lips purse and retract when you say “go-ing”? See how your lips jut out to pronouce the “b” in “bid”? This one sentence is a real face workout.
Say the rest of the sentences out loud, watching yourself speak in the mirror. Now say them all again, slowing down your rate of speech and exaggerating the facial movements.
This week, you should have a mirror session of five minutes every day. You’ll immediately notice that this practice will carry over into your “normal” speaking life, causing you to be more conscious of the way you speak and speak more clearly.
Additional Speech Exercise: Tongue Twisters
Speech Exercise: Enlist a Speech Monitor
Because it’s so hard to perform naturally when we’re focusing on speaking well, the best way to determine whether or not we’re enunciating properly when we speak and stop slurring and mumbling is to enlist a speech monitor.
It’s a lot easier for someone else to pick up on our sloppy speech habits than to hear ourselves. For convenience, choose someone that lives with you (spouse, child, or roommate), explain that you’re working on your enunciation, and ask him or her to tell you whenever you drop a G or don’t speak clearly. Keep track of how often your speech monitor tells you you’ve committed this speech offense.
What you should see, as you continue to practice speaking clearly, is the number of times your speech monitor hears you speaking sloppily decrease.
Ready for the pressure situation? Ask someone who works with you regularly to be a speech monitor.
The Benefits of Enunciation
As your enunciation improves, your listeners will:
- Form a better impression of you as you speak, thinking of you as an educated, knowledgeable person, more worthy of trust.
- Be better able to focus on the message you’re communicating, rather than being distracted by the way you’re expressing yourself.
Speech Lesson 1 Homework Assignment
To get the most out of this course, as I said, it’s important that you do the exercises. Your speech won’t improve unless you work at it regularly.
This week, you have two tasks;
- set aside five minutes a day where you can work with a mirror in a quiet place and practice the enunciation exercises above;
- enlist at least one speech monitor to help you catch your speech errors.
Next week, you’ll tackle the speech problem of fillers.
