Exercises for English pronunciation and articulation

Hey, it's Hadar. Today, I'm going to share with you three exercises that are going to

help you boost your pronunciation and clarity in English and help you improve your communication skills.

In the past, I've only shared these exercises with my students, but today I'm

sharing them with you as well.

But before we begin, if you are new to my channel, then welcome. My name is Hadar.

I'm a non-native speaker of English, and I'm here to help you speak English with clarity, confidence,

and freedom, and help you fall in love with how you sound in English. So make sure to

subscribe and click the bell to get all the notifications.

So let's begin. To do these exercises, you'll need two things: one - a text, any kind of

text; and the other one is a wine cork, any kind of wine. You could drink the wine before,

it might help, but you don't have to.

This is the text I've chosen for you today.

So pick a part in the text that you'd like to read. And again, it could be an email or

a news article or any type of script that you find online. Find something that is

fun and interesting. That is my only recommendation, but it's not a must. So, I'm going to randomly

choose a paragraph and then just read it first out loud. Here it goes.

"Are you kidding? The last thing they expected was Mickey Knox to get up close and personal.

They wanted a follow-up episode and wouldn't have taken anything I'd given them". Good.

The first exercise is with a wine cork. What I want you to do is to stick it between your

teeth and to say that text with a wine cork inside. What it's going to do is it's going

to force you to work harder to pronounce every single sound. At the same time, let's agree

that it's not going to sound clear, so don't worry about it. Remember that it's an exercise

for the tongue and for your mouth. Let's do it.

<Speaking with a wine cork> "Are you kidding? The last thing they expected was Mickey Knox

to get up close and personal. They wanted a follow-up episode and wouldn't have taken

anything I'd given them".

The TH is exceptionally challenging. "Think", "theory", "thick".

But what it does, it creates

more awareness in your mouth. Your tongue needs to work harder to articulate all those

consonants and it creates more space in your mouth - something that would serve you better

when it comes to pronouncing open vowels of English, like the 'a' as in cat, the 'ah'

as in father, or the 'ow' as in go.

So when you do that, that it creates a lot more space in your mouth and helps you sound

clearer. And the best part, once you take the cork, it feels like it's easier to say

all of those words. It's like running with weights - it's challenging, but possible.

Once you take off the weights, it's a lot easier to run. That is the same idea.

So what you want to do is say one sentence with a cork inside your mouth, and then you

take it out and you say it again. And try to enunciate every single sound. Of course,

all the 'b' and 'p' and 'th' are going to be a little more challenging because you can't

actually close your mouth.

If it's really challenging, you can cut through the wine cork and use a smaller space between

your teeth. That is also great. I mean, don't say 'no' just because it's a little challenging

at first, find a way to make it happen for you.

That was the first exercise, which is the cork exercise. The second exercise is to isolate

the vowels from the text. Now that might be a little more challenging, especially if you

don't have a lot of knowledge of the English vowel sounds. And for that, I have the precise

video for you and I'm going to link to it in the description to teach you all the different

vowel sounds of American English. But still, it forces you to try and isolate in your head,

what vowel sound it is.

So instead of reading words, you should be reading vowels.

So a sentence like "Are you kidding?" may sound something like this: 'aar-uh-i-i'.

'aar', we hear the R cause it's an R-colored

vowel, "you" becomes 'uh', "kidding" becomes 'i-i'. 'aar-uh-i-i'.

"The last thing they expected" - 'uh-a-i-ei-uh-e-uh'.

"The last thing they expected" - 'uh-a-i-ei-uh-e-uh',

"expected was Mickey Knox to get up close and personal".

'uh-i-ee-aa-uh-e-uh-ow-uh-uhr-uh-uh' - "was Mickey Knox to get up close and personal".

'uh-i-ee-aa' - "was Mickey Knox" - this is me telling you, you don't have to do that

- 'uh-e-uh-ow', "to get up close", 'uh-uhr-uh-uh' - "in personal".

Interesting, right?

Now, you don't have to do the whole text like that, but only doing it for one sentence is

so incredibly empowering because it puts you in control of what's happening in the words

and what you need to do be able to pronounce those words clearly.

So again, just one sentence is going to be great. And if you don't know what vowels you

need to pronounce, you can use resources like dictionary.com or a simple Google search to

help you understand what those vowels are.

The last exercise is what I call the rookie narrator. In this exercise, you will read

the text with exaggeration and pathos. The idea here is to give you a little more freedom

in your words and your English, and to explore your voice and expression in English.

"Are you kidding? The last thing they expected was Mickey Knox to get up close and personal.

They wanted a follow-up episode and wouldn't have taken anything I had given them.

I'm not going to tell Mickey Knox that, I'm going to make him think his gray matter depends on it".

Now, this is one of the exercises. Another exercise is to underdo it.

So, just for you to feel the difference between being very expressive and underexpressive.

So, for example: "Are you kidding? The last thing they expected

was Mickey Knox to get up close and personal.

They wanted a follow-up episode and wouldn't have taken anything I'd given them".

So you want to explore your abilities as a speaker, and to overdo it and underdo it is

a good way, because ultimately what you really want is to find a place right there in the

middle. And sometimes to be an overdoer, and sometimes to be a chill underdoer.

I just invented it.

Anyway, these are the three exercises: the cork exercise, the extract the vowels exercise,

and the rookie narrator exercise. Which one of the three is your favorite and you are

going to start doing it as you practice your pronunciation?

OK. If you like this video, click "Like" and be sure to share it

with your friends and teachers and students

so more people can do these silly exercises and see significant results.

Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.