talking?
If you do and want to change these articulation or diction exercises will help.
You'll probably be familiar with some of them. As they look a bit odd when observed, you may want to do them in privacy.

Firstly you need to loosen your jaws. The easiest way to do this is through yawning. Let your bottom jaw drop as far as you can without straining and close it again. RepI live in a country where *men are MEN. They walk tall. They work hard, play hard and tell it like it is. Or try to.

Their problem? Locked-jaw. Tight mouth.

Words of more than one syllable get trapped behind their teeth where I imagine they build up like plaque. Those Tom, Dick or Harry's finally sidle into the dentist when the pressure of holding back a semi-masticated word mountain gets too much. On 'Open wide', the rugged manly jaw cracks and out falls five years worth of verbal decay.

Now locked-jaw may be OK if your preferred communication style is nod, grunt, nah, maybe, yeah, seen me socks? or chuck us a beer. But a tad sad if you're aspiring to something more.

And it's even sadder to hear potentially good speakers puree their speech pre-delivery by forcing it through clenched teeth.

Providing your speaking equipment is in sound working order, I can only think of one legitimate reason for not opening your mouth while talking. That is you have badly fitting false teeth. If that's true, I'm sorry.

My Mother had false teeth. The story of how her real teeth were taken out and the ill-fitting dentures came to plague her life is too long for here. It happened in the dark ages of lousy to non-existent dental care many decades ago. Suffice to say her teeth were not made for talking. Until a kind dental specialist intervened, they clicked and clacked independently providing an interesting percussive counterpoint to anything she tried to say.

So do you lock your jaw or clench your teeth while talking?
If you do and want to change these articulation or diction exercises will help.
You'll probably be familiar with some of them. As they look a bit odd when observed, you may want to do them in privacy.

Firstly you need to loosen your jaws. The easiest way to do this is through yawning. Let your bottom jaw drop as far as you can without straining and close it again. Repeword mountain gets too much. On 'Open wide', the rugged manly jaw cracks and out falls five years worth of verbal decay.

Now locked-jaw may be OK if your preferred communication style is nod, grunt, nah, maybe, yeah, seen me socks? or chuck us a beer. But a tad sad if you're aspiring to something more.

And it's even sadder to hear potentially good speakers puree their speech pre-delivery by forcing it through clenched teeth.

Providing your speaking equipment is in sound working order, I can only think of one legitimate reason for not opening your mouth while talking. That is you have badly fitting false teeth. If that's true, I'm sorry.

My Mother had false teeth. The story of how her real teeth were taken out and the ill-fitting dentures came to plague her life is too long for here. It happened in the dark ages of lousy to non-existent dental care many decades ago. Suffice to say her teeth were not made for talking. Until a kind dental specialist intervened, they clicked and clacked independently providing an interesting percussive counterpoint to anything she tried to say.

So do you lock your jaw or clench your teeth while talking?
If you do and want to change these articulation or diction exercises will help.
You'll probably be familiar with some of them. As they look a bit odd when observed, you may want to do them in privacy.

Firstly you need to loosen your jaws. The easiest way to do this is through yawning. Let your bottom jaw drop as far as you can without straining and close it again. Repe-delivery by forcing it through clenched teeth.

Providing your speaking equipment is in sound working order, I can only think of one legitimate reason for not opening your mouth while talking. That is you have badly fitting false teeth. If that's true, I'm sorry.

My Mother had false teeth. The story of how her real teeth were taken out and the ill-fitting dentures came to plague her life is too long for here. It happened in the dark ages of lousy to non-existent dental care many decades ago. Suffice to say her teeth were not made for talking. Until a kind dental specialist intervened, they clicked and clacked independently providing an interesting percussive counterpoint to anything she tried to say.

So do you lock your jaw or clench your teeth while talking?
If you do and want to change these articulation or diction exercises will help.
You'll probably be familiar with some of them. As they look a bit odd when observed, you may want to do them in privacy.

Firstly you need to loosen your jaws. The easiest way to do this is through yawning. Let your bottom jaw drop as far as you can without straining and close it again. Repto plague her life is too long for here. It happened in the dark ages of lousy to non-existent dental care many decades ago. Suffice to say her teeth were not made for talking. Until a kind dental specialist intervened, they clicked and clacked independently providing an interesting percussive counterpoint to anything she tried to say.

So do you lock your jaw or clench your teeth while talking?
If you do and want to change these articulation or diction exercises will help.
You'll probably be familiar with some of them. As they look a bit odd when observed, you may want to do them in privacy.

Firstly you need to loosen your jaws. The easiest way to do this is through yawning. Let your bottom jaw drop as far as you can without straining and close it again. Reptalking?
If you do and want to change these articulation or diction exercises will help.
You'll probably be familiar with some of them. As they look a bit odd when observed, you may want to do them in privacy.

Firstly you need to loosen your jaws. The easiest way to do this is through yawning. Let your bottom jaw drop as far as you can without straining and close it again. Repeat 5 times. As a variation add sound. Say 'ahhhhhhhhhhh' for as long as you can on one breath.
Now try sounding the remaining vowels. Let each one go freely and fully from your relaxed mouth for the duration of one breath.

Next push your jaw from side to side with your mouth open and relaxed. Make it go at least five times left and then right as far you can without strain.

Your tongue needs a work out too. Open your mouth. Extend your tongue as far as possible and sweep completely around your lips to the left and then back. Now repeat but sweep to the right. Repeat 5 times. Another variation is do this behind closed lips. Firstly sweep around the outside of your teeth, left and right. Then do it again but sweep around the inside of your teeth. Be sure to push your tongue right into all the corners.

When you've done all of those you're ready for a set of tongue twisters. There are many of these focusing on either single letter or specific letter combinations cleverly designed to make us really work.
I've included a selection here to get you started. There are more on my diction exercises web page here.
Three tips before you start to ensure you get the best out of your time.

• Start slowly
• Carefully say each word making sure you hear the beginning and the end as well as sounding all internal vowel or consonant combinations clearly.
• Only when you have mastered at least two good run throughs try going fa