This month I have chosen an image of a duck to convey the crisp, clear sound of ‘K’ contained in words such as ‘Quack’ and ‘Duck’.

Over the last few weeks I have been working with a client to help them discover the fabulous sound, ‘K’. Why is it important? The ‘K’ sound, if you want to be technical, is an unvoiced plosive, one of the consonants which helps shape a word and gives it clarity.

The ‘K’ sound crops up in unexpected places in our words. ‘QU’ doesn’t look like a ‘K’ sound, but it is. The words ‘quick, queen, quality, quantify and quill’ all begin with the ‘K’ sound. It appears mid-word in ‘react, record, technique, taken and require’ and needs a bit of a helping hand to robustly form a clear-sounding word.

Often I hear professional speakers, actors and broadcasters leave out this important sound. Without it, clarity is lost, the word is softened and meaning of a word can be confused. I remember an episode of the BBC’s ‘The Apprentice’ when a team lost a task mostly due to the failure of the team to accurately say and spell the word ‘Arctic’. They pronounced and spelled it ‘Artic’. There are two ‘K’ sounds in ‘Arctic’, one in the middle, one at the end.

The ‘K’ sound is created when the back of the tongue and the back of the soft palate close together, as the air pressure from the diaphragm is waiting to be released in a soft ‘plosive’ sound – the air suddenly entering the mouth as the tongue drops and the soft palate is relaxed. It takes practise to find this sound and encourage the bounciness of the muscles to cooperate.

1. Breathe in.
2. Feel the bounce at the back of your mouth as you repeat the sound.
3. ‘K, K, K, K, K.’

Try saying the words below, paying particular attention to the hidden ‘K’ sounds.

1. The quality of the quill couldn’t be quantified.
2. They reacted quickly to the captain.
3. This technique required careful recording.

Clear speech is more important in many ways than accent neutralising. Many of us have mumbled at one time due to embarrassment, fear or lack of confidence. One way to improve your speech is to use the sounds of consonants accurately.

Speaking well takes practise and repeating exercises like those above can help you improve your clarity. Clear speech takes time to master and one of the most important aspects is to give yourself time to change your speech habits. We all have speech habits, where our muscles habitually move in the same way as we read or think of words to say. Speaking clearly depends on changing our muscle habits, or muscle memory, so they are used to form our words clearly.

Voice coaching or speech coaching helps to you to conquer your fears, find confidence in yourself and feel sure of how you are speaking. Speaking well takes time, it needs encouragement and practise. Before you know it, you could be taking to voice and speech coaching as easily as a duck to water!

If you would like to know more about improving your diction, enunciating clearly or elocution lessons, please get in touch for a free chat.