Tongue Twisting Enunciation Exercises for Drama Teachers and Students

Tongue Twisters to Practice Enunciation

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Young performers face several challenges. For one, they must memorize lines. For another, they must speak loud enough for Grandpa to hear them in the 22nd row. But perhaps the most daunting challenge is learning how to slow down and enunciate.

Enunciation was once a part of the general school curriculum. Students learned poems by heart and stood up to recite them —and older students learned the art of rhetoric and debate, which included proper enunciation. Today, though, enunciation has become the province of drama clubs and theater groups. Which means it is up to you, the drama teacher, to find and use exercises and techniques for helping your students to pronounce their consonants and vowels.

Tongue-Twisting Tools for Building Enunciation Skills

Part of every theater class and rehearsal should include warm-ups. Most teachers do both physical and vocal warmups—and no vocal warm-up is complete without reciting a few enunciation exercises. With that in mind, you will find these 36 fundamentally fun tongue twisters to be a great resource. Each one provides an "elocution work out." Take a few for a test drive. Say each line three or four times. But remember, do not worry about speed. Focus on speaking clearly, even if you must over-enunciate at first.

A - Around the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran.

B - Big black bug bit a big black bear and the big black bear bled black blood.

C - Can I cook a proper cup of coffee in a copper coffee pot?

D - Don't doubt the doorbell, but differ with the doorknob.

E - Eight gray geese in a green field grazing.

F - Fine white vinegar with veal.

The free thugs set three thugs free.

G - Grab the groundhog from the glazed grass.

Grey geese in a green field grazing.

H - High roller, low roller, lower roller.

How can a clam cram in a clean cream can?

I - Inexplicably mimicking him hiccupping.

I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch

J - Jingle jungle jangle joker.

K - Knit kilts for nasty cold nights.

L - Little lucky luke likes lakes, lucky little luke likes licking lakes

M - Monkeys make monopoly monotonous.

N - The Next nest will not necessarily be next to nothing.

O - Octopi occupy a porcupine's mind.

Only royal oily royal oil boils

P - Peter Prangle, the prickly pear picker, picked three perfectly prickly pears.

A proper copper coffee pot.

Q - Queen Catherine wakes the cat, and the cat quietly cries.

R - Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers!

Roberta ran rings around the Roman ruins.

S - Some shun sunshine. Do you shun sunshine?

Six stick shifts stuck shut.

T - Three thick thistle sticks.

The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.

U - Unique New York, Unique New York, Unique New York.

V - Venti, Grande, Tall - Very Grand Words for Large, Medium, Small.

W - Will's wetsuit is round and wet and rough and wide and ready to go on a watery ride.

Wayne went to Wales to watch walruses.

X - Xylophones exist or so existentialists insist.

Y - Yoda met a Yeti on the Plains of Serengeti.

Z - Zoologists illogically love to read astrology.