If you do not know how to speak well and express your thoughts clearly, then it will be very difficult for you to become a successful and respected person. The ability to speak clearly and share your thoughts with people so that they immediately understand you will be useful not only during working hours, but also in everyday life. Thanks to these skills, you can easily win the respect of your boss and colleagues, solve any everyday problem that arises out of the blue, and come to an agreement with complete strangers without shouting, scandals, threats and hysterics.
People do not want to waste their time listening to a bad storyteller whose speeches are too boring, monotonous and uninteresting. They can pretend that they are listening to such an interlocutor, but in reality they will not hear or understand anything that is said. And there is nothing strange in this, because communicating with an interlocutor who does not know how to speak correctly and beautifully is not the most pleasant thing in the world.
A person who knows how to speak competently and very clearly express the thoughts that have visited his head has a special charisma. He is confident in himself and his abilities, so he does not need to raise his voice or insult his interlocutor and get personal in order to convey his point of view to him. If you know how to speak beautifully and argue your position, then people will listen to you with sincere admiration and will try not to miss a single word you say.
How to learn to speak beautifully and clearly express your thoughts? There are several effective ways through which you will not only learn to use and select those words that will optimally reflect your thoughts, but also be able to carry on a conversation about any subject for hours without any inconvenience.
Training diction
To attract the attention of the person you need, convince him that you are right, agree with him on further cooperation, exert a certain influence on him and win him over, you must have perfect diction. Thanks to diction training, you will learn to correctly change intonation, clearly pronounce consonants and vowels, highlight important points with your voice, etc.
Diction training begins with proper breathing. If you breathe incorrectly, your voice will begin to break, you will take long pauses between words or sentences, because of which the meaning of the phrases you say will be perceived by listeners in a distorted form. This is why many famous speakers use speech or diaphragm breathing during one or another public speech, since they most often do not have enough normal breathing.
To learn how to use air correctly and restore it in a timely manner, you need to practice a specially developed system of breathing training. This activity requires a person to have iron willpower, great patience and perseverance, but it is worth it.
Once you have learned to breathe correctly, start working on correct pronunciation or diction. Turn on the recorder and read any text, then listen to the recording and evaluate your speech. Let a few people whose opinions you trust listen to the recording. Does your assessment match other people's assessments?
Analyze both your own opinion and the opinions of other people. Highlight the main shortcomings: pronunciation of vowel sounds without stress (weak position), incorrect pronunciation of soft sounds, loss or absence of certain vowel sounds, “crumpled” or “eaten” consonant sounds, incorrect connection of connecting consonant sounds, lack of clear pronunciation of whistling and hissing sounds and etc.
To improve diction, you should perform a set of exercises daily that are aimed at relaxing the muscles responsible for correct and clear articulation.
Start with the easiest exercises and gradually increase their difficulty. Proceed to a more difficult exercise only if you have completely mastered the previous exercise. To maintain the results already achieved, do not forget to repeat basic exercises once a week. We recommend: 11 effective exercises to improve diction in adults
Learn to breathe correctly
Often the reason for your incoherent speech can be anxiety and self-doubt. Correct breathing allows you to relax and reduce the level of accumulated stress. That's why I always start my classes by staging it.
Your task is to learn to breathe with your lower body. When inhaling correctly, the upper abdomen should protrude slightly forward, and as you exhale, the diaphragm should contract (the abdomen goes deeper, as if it is striving towards the spine). Inhalation must be done through the nose, and exhalation through the mouth. The exhalation should be amplitude, sonorous and always twice as long as the inhalation.
I recommend trying this exercise. Lie on your back on a relatively hard surface. Place one hand on the diaphragm area (its conventional border can be drawn along the lower edge of the ribs), and the other on the chest. Watch which one rises as you inhale. Your task is to lift the one that is lying on your stomach.
Next, turn over, lie on your stomach and put your hands under your head. As you inhale, try to push your ribs off the surface you are lying on. There will be a feeling that the lower part of the body is inflated like a balloon. Perform these exercises 5-10 minutes a day - this way you will form a new breathing habit.
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