Crystal Clear Communication by Dr. Gary S. Goodman

Author:Dr. Gary S. Goodman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: G&D Media
Published: 2019-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Crystal clear Articulation

Here is a way to help any listener to listen better.

A bag clerk at the local supermarket has a communication problem. In addition to doing his job, he opens his mouth and marbles spill out. I’m speaking metaphorically, of course. He doesn’t actually gargle marbles, but he sounds as if he does. Consequently, he cannot be understood without extraordinary effort on the part of the listener.

What he is failing to do goes under several names, one of which is articulating. Articulating is defined as “fully forming your words so they are completely comprehensible to a listener of reasonable sensibilities.”

To articulate, you need to employ your articulators. They include your lips, your teeth, and your tongue. If any one of these items is lazy and not fully engaged, you’ll suffer from poor diction or sloppy speech.

This implies that effort must be used—continuous exertion—to ensure that our words are sounding comprehensible.

The grocery bagger swallows his words, to use a phrase that was a favorite of one speech teacher I knew. This means most of the sound-producing action is occurring in the back of his throat. His lips, teeth, and tongue are barely engaged in delivering his words.

If you were to watch him when he speaks, you would see that his mouth is agape like that of a fish. Excellent articulators almost close their lips in a pucker when they say the words wood or would. His remain far apart.

Try saying would both ways, open-lipped and tightly lipped, and you hear and feel the differences.

Let’s focus on one word—articulation—to dramatize the importance of fully forming your speech.

There are five syllables: (1) ar, (2) ti, (3) cu, (4) la, (5) shun. Here are the typical faults that we can have in articulating this word.

1. We can swallow the beginning of the word. Instead of pronouncing ar as are, we could say it as uh: uh-ticulation. This drops the R.

2. We can merge syllables, dropping sounds. Some people, for example, would say ar-ti-clay-shun. The U sound is eliminated.

3. We might swallow the suffix, dropping the very last sound, the N. One technique to help us to remember to sound out the very ends of words is to add another syllable, the uh sound. So articulation becomes articulation-uh. Preachers are often known to do this regularly so they’ll be heard clearly by those in the last pews.

If you have ever been criticized for being hard to understand, sloppy speech or poor articulation may be your problem. It’s time to fix it, because you cannot communicate clearly without doing so. Here are some tips:

1. A speedy voice is the enemy of complete articulation, so please SLOW DOWN. You can always accelerate a little later on, after you have repaired this defect.

2. Go especially slowly with long and hard-to-pronounce words and with foreign words.

3. Breathe deeply. This will enable you to have the stamina and breath to carry all of the syllables to the very end, and you won’t lose any because you’re out of steam.

4. Practice reading into a recorder.

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