Activity

1. Stand with good posture.
2. Make your face as small as possible.
3. Now make your face as big and large as possible.
4. Do this several times.
5. Now imagine that you have got a fly on your nose. Try to remove it without using your hands.
6. Continue by pulling the silliest faces you can imagine. This is known as ‘gurning’ in Britain, where there are competitions to see who can pull the silliest face. Go for it!
7. Now, to finish, place one hand on your face and drag it slowly down, as though removing a mask from your face. As the hand comes off the face, the jaw should follow it and drop down.

Activity

1. Touch your skull with your fingertips next to your ears. Gently move the jaw to locate the joint where the jaw meets the skull.
2. Gently massage that area.
3. Now put the heel of your hands on the jaw hinge area and press into the cheeks. Smooth the lower jaw down away from the upper jaw until the mouth hangs loosely.
4. Then release the pressure and let the lower jaw come back up.
5. Do this several times.
6. Finally, imagine that you are chewing gum. As you chew, the gum gets larger and larger.
7. Now finish with a good yawn.

Activity

1. Relax and gently blow through your lips. If you have a problem doing this, squeeze your cheeks as you blow, using one hand.
2. Then bring your lips together as if kissing someone.
3. Now open your lips into a large smile.
4. Repeat the following sound several times: /p/. Make sure that you really push the /p/ off your lips.
5. Now, repeat this sound several times: /b/. Bounce your lips off each other whilst doing this /b/.
6. Continue by repeating the next sound several times: /m/. Feel the tingle in your lips as you do this and open your mouth between each repetition of the /m/.
7. Finally, repeat the following sound: /w/. Blow gently through the lips on a kiss to make this /w/.
8. Now, to appreciate the importance of the lips, turn to a partner and try having a conversation without closing your lips.
9. Finally, have the same conversation, this time allowing the lips to touch when necessary. Be aware of the lips touching, and as you enjoy this feeling, exaggerate their movements.

Activity

1. Stand, or sit, with good posture.
2. Stick out your tongue.
3. Flatten it.
4. Now point it.
5. Relax your tongue.
6. Repeat this several times. As you are doing this, you are strengthening, or toning, your tongue. Now fold the tongue whilst sticking it out. If you can’t do this, don’t worry not everybody can. It’s a genetic thing!
7. Brush your teeth with your tongue. Do this with the tip of the tongue in a real exploration of the mouth.
8. To finish, stretch the tongue. This can only be done by placing the tip of the tongue behind the lower teeth and pushing the central part of the tongue out of the mouth. Relax the tongue back into the mouth. Do this several times. If you do this properly, the tongue will start to feel tired.

Activity

1. Choose a partner to work with in pairs.
2. You are going to have a conversation without using your tongue. You will use the jaw and the lips, but not the tongue!
3. I want you to have a ‘proper’ conversation: you are really trying to tell your partner something and not just firing out bizarre sounds. And as in a proper conversation, you don’t speak both at the same time or interrupt each other!
4. Finally, tell your partner the same story, but this time with the tongue: feel the difference!

Activity

1. Stand, or sit, with good posture.
2. Gently open your mouth by dropping the jaw. The tongue should remain relaxed.
3. Make the ‘guh-guh-guh’ sound. Repeat it several times. Feel where the action is located in the back of the mouth: this is where the root of the tongue and the soft palate meet.
4. Now make the ‘kuh-kuh-kuh’ sound. Repeat it several times. Make sure that neither the jaw nor the tongue is moving.
5. Now put the two sounds together: ‘guh-kuh-guh-kuh-guh-kuh’ and repeat the sequence several times.

Activity

1. Stand with good posture.
2. When I clap my hands, open your mouth wide in a silent gasp of horror or pleasure. Feel the air touch the back of your mouth.
3. Repeat this.

Activity

1. Stand, or sit, with good posture.
2. Gently open your mouth by dropping the jaw; the tongue should remain relaxed.
3. Now, make an ‘ah’ sound. Feel the opening of the back of the mouth as your soft palate lifts, preventing air from passing through the nose. Repeat this ‘ah’ sound several times.
4. This time, as you are making the ‘ah’ sound, bring the root of the tongue and the soft palate together and hum on a ‘ng’ sound. Keep your mouth open, don’t move the jaw.
5. Then, go onto an ‘ah’ sound again. Repeat this several times.

Sentences

• ‘Ouch!’ Went the oyster on being opened.
• ‘Aw!’ Went the admiral in epicurean appreciation.
• Bertie buys books about brown bears and boats.
• We wish Willy would whistle when Walt walks with Whitney.
• Kicking Ken’s gong is creation gone wrong.
• ‘Discombobulation’ is a jolly, challenging, and tickling word to pronounce.
• Writing rhymes in Mandarin was Thang’s way of pondering on oriental thoughts and themes that came to him in crazy dreams!
• He would occasionally ask himself if he was capable of catching the crabs that skedaddled on the glistening seashore after the retreating tide.
• Peregrine was told that frying shrimps over an open fire was generally recommended as a therapeutic exercise for anyone suffering from a stiff neck.
• He pooh-poohed the idea as palpable nonsense, saying, ‘Oh, honestly, whatever next?’
• Wriggling awkwardly into her newly purchased jeans, Desdemona managed to dislocate her right knee.
• She could only be extricated after the drastic measure of cutting the denim with scissors was employed by her boyfriend, Jason.
• Claudius collected unusual mosaics depicting zebras on the Serengeti plains, inspired by his Uncle John’s own whimsy for arranging multifarious artefacts of African origin into abstruse shapes of mythological beasts.

Activity

1. Choose a partner to work with.
2. Here is a short text, one for each of you. Take the time to read it through and make sure you are comfortable with the pronunciation of all the words in it. If not, check with your partner or me.
3. You are going to read the text aloud together. But one of you is going to read only the vowel sounds, and the other one the consonant sounds. So, before we start the activity, you must agree with your partner on who is going to say the vowel SOUNDS and who the consonant SOUNDS.
4. Now, for a moment, work on your own. Take the time to identify the sounds which you are going to make. Practise pronouncing these sounds, either the vowel SOUNDS or the consonant SOUNDS.
5. Now come together with your partner. The person who has prepared the vowel sounds will read the text, but just the vowel sounds. Your partner will listen to you.
6. Now do the same with the consonant sounds.
7. Finally, do a joint ‘reading’; read the text together with your partner as if you were one voice. Try and make it fluid. This is not easy!
        Allow your learners time to experiment and to discuss the pronunciation of words.
8. Now to finish, I’d like to have a pair volunteer to read the text aloud for the whole class!