How to Practice Consonants and Vowels in Acting Auditions

Diction is defined as how clearly you enunciate your words. Good diction, ironically, often goes unnoticed, but poor diction is always noticed. Here are a few exercises and tips to help your next audition or presentation sound terrific.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pencil

Speak Clearly

1. Empty your mouth. It should come as no surprise that any time you are speaking in public, whether at an audition or giving a presentation, you should have nothing in your mouth. This means no gum and no food. Ask the director or an assistant if you may keep a bottle of water with you during your time on stage. Between two monologues or scenes is an acceptable time to take a quick drink if you are prone to experiencing a dry mouth, which can gum up your diction.

2. Warm up your mouth. Exaggeration is the simplest way to warm up your lips, cheeks and tongue for any public speaking. Pronounce each and every word in your monologue slowly and with exaggerated facial movements. Hit each consonant clearly and stretch out the vowel sounds. Use your entire face, not just your mouth. Your "O's" should raise your eyebrows, for example. Your "E's" should feel like a huge smile, and so on.

3. Hit your hard consonants. As a warm up and for practice, speak these words loudly and clearly, emphasizing the capitalized letters: big, bright, bank (BiG, BRighT, BaNK); flip, fast, feet (FLiP, FaST, FeeT); pick, please, post (PicK, PLeaSe, PoST); zip, zap, zub (ZiP, ZaP, ZuB); and mom, must, move (MoM, MuST, MoVe). Exaggerate these sounds with your lips and tongue. Avoid truncating any of the sounds (such as "mus" instead of "must") or replacing sounds with cultural dialects. For example, the "glottal stop" is common on the east coast--dropping "T" sounds such as in button or mountain. Practice hitting all the consonants.

4. Practice vowels. Once you have all your consonants coming out clearly, work on your vowels. Try these for warm up and practice, stretching out the vowel sounds and using your whole mouth and face: ate, eat, ite, oht and yout. Go ahead and hit those T's while you're at it.

5. Use a pencil. It's an old trick, but it still works. Place a pencil between your teeth lengthwise, so each end extends past your lips on either side. You don't need to push the pencil back to the point of discomfort; just enough that you'll have to work to speak around it. Practice your monologue or speech slowly, using your tongue, lips, teeth and cheeks to practice forming words around the obstruction. Then try it again without the pencil, and see if your diction has improved. You can also try this exercise with the consonant and vowel warm ups listed above.

Tips & Warnings

• Bring dental floss to your audition or presentation and be sure to use it several minutes before you take the stage. A piece of lettuce between your teeth won't leave a good impression.
• While you must be able to enunciate your words clearly, your character may not. It may be perfectly acceptable to drop or add sounds to your character's speaking style. Still, it's better to err on the side of clarity.
• When you practice your consonants, the sounds are exaggerated. When performing, these sounds should be clear, but not necessarily exaggerated. Two minutes of hard T's would drive anyone crazy; your goal is clarity, not exaggeration.

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