Enunciate

A Diction Exercise for Crisp Articulation (from Write-Out-Loud.com)
"Do you have trouble speaking clearly? It could be a case of lazy tongue! Yes, the tongue is muscled and like any other muscle, to keep fit it needs a regular work out. We visited my mother-in-law over the Christmas break and she reminded me of this articulation exercise. Over her many years (60+) of teaching speech and drama, it remains one of her favorites for assuring crisply pronounced words. When she taught children's classes she accompanied the exercise with a story she called **//"Mrs Tongue Does Her Housework"//**. Have fun with it! It's not pretty for observers but the results are great! The story is in itallics. The instructions are in ordinary font below each segment.

//Mrs Tongue lives in her house, the mouth.// //Every morning she mops it from ceiling to floor.// //First she sweeps her mop from right to left.// (Run your tongue in a full circle around your cheek walls across the front of your top and bottom teeth. Repeat three times.) //Next she sweeps her mop from left to right.// (Reverse the direction of the circle. Repeat three times.) //Now she dusts the furniture.// (Sweep your tongue as rapidly as you can from side to side across the upper teeth. Repeat at least 10 times.) //Then she shakes out the rug out the window.// (Stick the tongue out, extended as far as you can, and move it rapidly up and down. Repeat at least 10 times.) //Lastly she sweeps away the cobwebs from around the front door.// (Stick the tongue out as far as you can and sweep it from right to left around the outside of your lips. Repeat 3 times, then reverse the direction and repeat 3 times.) This exercise, repeated daily with a regular dose of tongue twisters carefully selected to eliminate known pronunciation problems, will help immensely. Click the link to choose your [|**tongue twisters**]! The page has a large range covering the most commonly muddled single and combination letter sounds."

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