373 How To Practise 2 - We use our speech muscles to create sounds.
- You have probably been speaking English for a while. This means your muscles are used to moving in a certain way for English.
- You will need to break some of your muscle habits and to create new sounds. Re-training your muscles may take some time.
Imagine you want to run a marathon (42 kilometres or 26 miles). You would not run a marathon without training first.
It’s the same with the physical skills of speech.
1) You warm up your speech muscles (with articulation exercises) to make them stronger and more flexible.
2) You work out which muscles to move and how to move them. 3) You practise every day and improve. 4) Soon you can move your muscles accurately without thinking (= muscle memory). 5) Finally, you can put the new sounds into your everyday speech.
Steps for Practising a New Sound
Follow these steps when approaching a new sound. Once you can do a step, then move to the next step.
1. Practise the Sound 2. Practise the Sound in Words 3. Practise the Sound in Phrases 4. Practise the Sound in Sentences 5. Practise the Sound in a Reading Passage (or any text)* 6. Start putting the Sound into Everyday Speech (see next page)
All of the worksheets are designed in a way to help you do this. Find out how to put sounds into speech on the next page.
*The Reading Passage section of the course has lots of texts you can read and listen to
TED Talks and Gresham College Lectures have videos and transcripts of speeches with many different speakers. Go to the Listening Resources section of the course to find these
