Welcome to the InFluency Podcast. I’m Hadar, and this is episode number 186. And today you are going to join me for a fun pronunciation practice.

Hey, hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the InFluency Podcast. Today we have another daily pronunciation practice. So this is the audio version. Of course, you can watch the video version and see me moving my tongue all around. So, I actually definitely recommend watching the video for this one, if you want to do this practice daily. But if not, you can definitely just listen and follow my guidance, especially if you’re driving and you want to use that driving time efficiently.

So, today we have a daily pronunciation practice that is going to improve your pronunciation and diction and your ability to become aware of your articulation organs. And I recommend to do it every day before you start your English practice, or at the end of the day, or at the beginning of the day. So, I’m not going to waste your time. Let’s get to work, prepare your tongue. Here we go.

Hey everyone, it’s Hadar. Welcome to the daily pronunciation practice – a 10-minute drill designed to help you improve your pronunciation, your clarity, and your confidence using English. You can do it daily, you can do it in the morning, during the day, at the end of the day, before an important meeting, or just before you start your English practice.

Many of you are already practicing daily with our morning pronunciation practice. So we decided to keep it interesting and add another daily pronunciation practice, so you can alternate between the two. If you don’t know our morning pronunciation practice, I’m going to link to it in the description.

Let’s begin by checking for tension. So, start by maybe massaging the jaw a little bit, and check if you’re holding any tension here, in the jaw. So, massage the jaw, and start noticing your breaths. Take a deep breath in, breathe out. Try to breathe to your belly. And when you breathe, relax your jaw even more.

Now, one more thing I want you to do is to raise your shoulders and then release the shoulders and all the tension that you have in your shoulders and neck. Okay? Let’s do it together.

We’re going to do the same thing with the face. Let’s tense the face up and then release, okay? Scrunch the face, let go. Scrunch the face, let go. One more time. Scrunch your face, let go. Lip trill. And lip trill going up and down. Very good.

Now we’re going to warm up the lips. We’re going to start with ‘ee’ and move into ‘uw’. ‘ee’ – ‘uw’. These are also the high vowels: front vowel – ‘ee’, back vowel – ‘uw’. ‘ee’ – ‘uw’. And over-exaggerate the articulation of the lips, okay? Really pull the lips to the sides and then push them forward. ‘ee’ – ‘uw’. Very good.

Now we’re going to practice two diphthongs: ‘ow’ – ‘aw’. And again, we’re going to exaggerate it a bit. ‘ow’ – ‘aw’. ‘ow’ as in ‘go’, ‘ow’ as in ‘now’. ‘ow’ – ‘aw’. Good.

Next up, we’re going to warm up the voice and we’re going to play with a pitch a little bit. So start with a hum, and then we’re going to start really, really low, go all the way up. Okay?

Take a deep breath, and then we’re going to start high up and then go all the way down.

Good. Take a deep breath. And now we’re going to go up and then down.

Moving on to a tongue twister. We’ll begin with “Sheila needs, Sheena leads”. That’s a high ‘ee’ sound. “Sheila needs, Sheena leads”. So we’re replacing the L and the N.

“Sheila needs, Sheena leads” x5.

Okay, good. The next one is “She sees cheese”. We’re playing between the /sh/ of ‘she’, the /s/ of ‘sees’, and the /ch/ of ‘cheese’, and the /z/ at the end as well. “She sees cheese” x7.

Moving on to practicing reductions. ‘did you’, when we say it fast in a sentence, turns into ‘dija’. So let’s just practice that. ‘dija’ x7.

Did you tell them? Did you know it? Did you do it?

“Did you tell them?” x5.

“Did you know it?” x5.

“Did you do it?” x5.

Did you tell them? Did you know it? Did you do it? Did you tell him? Did you know it? Did you do it?

Good. Next one is ‘kind of’, that turns into ‘kinda’. And sometimes we can even drop the /d/ – ‘kina’.

“I kinda like it” x7.

“It’s kinda lame” x7.

“I like this kind of music” x5. ‘kinda’.

Good. Moving on to ‘out of’ that turns into ‘ada’. It sounds like ‘at a’. ‘ada’.

“Out of here” x4.

“Out of your mind” x4.

“Out of here” x4.

“Out of your mind” x4.

Now we’re going to practice the three A vowel sounds: ‘a’ as in ‘cat’, ‘uh’ as in ‘cup’, ‘aa’ as in ‘father’. ‘a – uh – aa’.

‘hat – hut – hot’ x5.

‘lack – luck – lock’ x5.

‘cab – cub – cob’ x5.

Good. Now we’re going to practice intonation. We’re going to practice three different types of international patterns. We’ll begin with rising – ↑. Falling intonation – ↓. And then rising-falling-rising intonation – ↑↓↑.

Now we’re going to add words to it. We’re going to use the word ‘no’. Rising intonation – no ↑. Falling intonation – no ↓. Rising-falling-rising intonation – no ↑↓↑.

Same thing with a word ‘really’. Rising intonation – really ↑. And take your time and explore your voice here. If you need to go slower, go slower. Falling intonation – really ↓. Rising-falling-rising intonation – really ↑↓↑.

Good. Now we’re going to explore the different placements of your voice. We’re going to start with a chest voice. So you want to go as low as possible. You can put your hands on your chest and just say, “How are you doing?”. “How are you doing?” x5. Feel the vibrations here, in your chest. Go really low in pitch. “How are you doing?” x5.

Then we’re going to move to our middle voice. And you want to feel like you’re pushing your voice out, it’s right here. “How are you doing?” x5.

Moving to your head voice. “How are you doing?” x5.

Middle: “How are you doing?” Head: “How are you doing?” Chest: “How are you doing?” Middle: “How are you doing?” Head: “How are you doing?”

Okay, that’s it. Now, to wrap it up, let’s practice a fun sentence with a lot of flap T’s.

“The little beetle battled the animal in the jungle”.

“The little beetle battled the animal in the jungle” x5. One more time. “The little beetle battled the animal in the jungle”. Very good.

Now breathe out, breathe in. Breathe out, breathe in.

All right, that’s it. Amazing job. You can do this pronunciation practice every day in the morning, in the middle of the day, before you go to sleep. It’s going to help you improve your pronunciation and understand how you can use your voice and articulation organs in a way that serves you best.

I hope you enjoyed it. Once you do it, write ‘done’ in the comments. And if you’re doing it daily, write the date as well. So you can keep track, create a streak, and hold yourself accountable.

If you like this kind of episode, I have different pronunciation drills, 10 minutes a day, I’m going to list all of them in the description below, so you’ll have different things to practice every single day. Got to keep it interesting!

Okay. So, thank you so much. And I will see you tomorrow in your next pronunciation practice. Bye.