The MOST EFFECTIVE Vocal Warm up for Speaking English

You don’t want any soreness or pain when speaking English. Pull together your favorite exercises to get you relaxed and warmed up.

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Video Transcript:

Today we’re talking about speaking with a relaxed, natural American accent by using some relaxation exercises. These exercises are what help my students lower their placement, relax their neck and throat area, and really capture that American sound.  

I’m Rachel and I’ve been teaching the American accent and English listening skills to non-native speakers for over 15 years. Check out Rachelsenglish.com to learn more about improving your spoken English and to get a free course: Top 3 ways to Master the American Accent. 

First, to learn more about placement, it might be helpful to hear a student speaking with two different placements. This is Shawn, a student in Rachel’s English Academy who has been working really hard on finding a natural American accent through lowering placement and relaxation. Hi native language is Mandarin. This is how he sounded when he first joined the Academy.  

Hello everybody, my name is Shawn. So today I’d like to make a free talk video my using the random question generator. So, let’s go to the website and click for a question.  

And this is what he sounded like after about  4-6 weeks of practice with the Academy materials. 

Hello everybody, my name is Shawn. So today I’d like to make a free talk video my using the random question generator. 

The sound started out pressed in his face,  

Hello everybody, my name is Shawn  

and now it has relaxed into his whole body. 

Hello everybody, my name is Shawn 

We’re going to learn a bit more from Shawn in a moment on how he did this 

First let’s talk about where in the body I want you to feel the voice, then we can talk about relaxation techniques to get you there.  

One of the things I often talk about with my students is placement. I sometimes feel like their voice only comes from their head and is placed very much so here. Whereas my voice when I speak English rests more here and I feel the placement a little lower. Let’s talk a little bit what happens when you’re speaking.  

So the diaphragm here, an involuntary muscle just like your heart tenses up which pulls down a little bit. That turns your lungs into a vacuum and it sucks the air in. When your diaphragm relaxes the air then comes out. Your vocal cords here are what make the sound. Think of blowing up a balloon and taking the neck of it pulling it wide so it makes that annoying squeak sound. That’s what your vocal cords are. So your lungs are the balloon and your vocal cords are the mouth of the balloon. And this pressure here is the energy of the voice. So this is the energy, the fuel of the voice. And up here we have the articulators. The tongue, the teeth, the jaw. That takes the core sound made by the vocal cords and shapes them into the sounds of American English. I feel like many of my students lack a connection to this fuel, to the energy and they speak only from their face. Of course their body works in the same way, they’re bringing in the air but they seem to have no attachment to it. And their voice seems completely detached from their bodies. But when I speak, I feel my voice very attached to my body. One exercise you can do to try to focus on your body rather than your face when you’re speaking is just to exaggerate the movement here of your abdomen to connect more to a lower sensation of the breath. Now, you wouldn’t want to do that when you’re speaking but it could be a good exercise for you to get you into your body.  

So here we have the fuel and here the articulation. Now we want our articulators to be very relaxed. If there’s any tension in the throat for example, it will bring the voice up and the placement up and then we lose the connection here to the fuel of the voice to the body.  

We don’t want tension in our body, we don’t want to lose that connection. So we need to relax. My colleague Tom and I are going to go through some exercises now to relax the jaw, tongue, lips, neck, and throat so that you can feel natural and relaxed, speaking without pain, as you work on your American accent. These, and other exercises in Rachels English Academy are exactly what Shawn worked with so hard for those weeks to lower his placement. Another Chinese speaker in the Academy noticed Shawn’s improvement and reached out to him for advice.  

I would suggestion that you really take module 3 very seriously because it is, it is very important for us to learn how to relax if we want to discover you know, voices, uh, around the chest, you know, how to and then our throat, how to relax out throat um, it is very important for us to learn to relax so that we can discover the placement you know from here up until here.   

You want daily practice, you want to find relaxation. Now let’s see some exercises you can do everyday to relax. 

First off you may have heard from teachers in the past that you need to drop your jaw more. More jaw drop. This instruction can create tension as you work on vowel and diphthong sounds that need a bunch of space like ah all and I and others. Instead of thinking about using your muscles to hold the jaw open which can add tension to the face think of releasing the jaw. Let the jaw drop down using gravity rather than muscle. If you put your fingers just under your ears and open and close your mouth, you’ll feel movement of the jaw bone. We’ll call this spot the jaw hinge. Think of releasing your jaw from back here rather than forcing the chin down. By doing this we lose the tension that can affect the sound and we have a fuller more open sound. We’ll come back to the hinge but first let’s start some jaw relaxation exercises.  

Let’s start by just easily massaging the jaw with your fingertips. As you begin freeing the jaw you may start to yawn more. Awesome keep yawning. It’s a great stretch and provides you with wonderful deep breaths that encourage support. When you yawn make sure you yawn both vertically and horizontally. Really get a great stretch for the jaw and the lips actually with that one. Now, using the heel of your hand, drag the hand down the jaw bone on the face towards your chin. Really thinking about releasing that jaw hinge and letting the face muscles relax.  

I look silly.  

Hmm.  

But it is relaxing.  

Totally okay to look silly it’s great actually. Oh I feel so good. Now let’s go back to that hinge we spoke about earlier back here. Allow your newly relaxed jaw to release down for a moment and feel that space that opens up under your ear as the hinge releases down. This is a great pressure point on our face. By pressing into it we can release the jaw even more. Now this can feel quite painful so don’t hurt yourself but it will feel great when you let go.  

Oh now take your chin between thumb and index finger and move the jaw up and down.  

Well, ah it’s hard.  

Don’t hurt yourself on this one.  

Yeah, watch your tongue. 

It can be very difficult, yeah make sure your tongues not in the way. But really let your hand control your jaw. You’ll feel the jaw kind of try to fight back a little bit, see if you can relax it and just let your hand be in control.  

Yeah, my jaw definitely does not want to give up control. 

Yeah, yeah. So lots, lots to work on.  

Now, if you haven’t felt silly already, prepare to. And if you’re really relaxed prepared to let a little saliva fly around. Now clasp your hands together and shake your body and face keeping that released.  

I don’t know if I’m willing to do that on camera.  

Come on Rachel.  

Okay. Do it again. 

Let’s use this newly released jaw a bit and practice on some vowel sounds. Some vowel sounds that use some jaw drops so ah and oh, now let’s go from u, which has a tight lip rounding here, u and move into all oh.  

U-oh 

Now let’s move from u into ah.  

U-ah 

You can practice going back and forth and this may help you hear and feel the difference between those two sounds.  

Alright. Hopefully your jaw feels more relaxed, remember to do this whenever you feel tension creep in as you practice and drill and when you’re having trouble finding the difference between vowel sounds it may just be that you want more space and the best way to create space is to release that jaw.  

From the L to the R to the T. The tongue is very important when it comes to articulation of all kinds of sounds. So having a relaxed tongue that can move quickly and efficiently is a very good thing. Let’s learn how to relax this very strong muscle.  

Just how strong is the tongue? Very. It’s considered the strongest muscle in the body in relation into its size. One way to see how strong it is, is to put your pinky finger to the roof of your mouth and then pin your pinky finger to the roof of the mouth with the tongue.  

Like that.  

Now, have a tongue versus pinky war.  

If you’re like me, your tongue wins every time and your pinky hurts. Ow.  

So let’s relax this mega muscle.  

First, stick out your tongue. Make sure you have clean hands for this and massage your tongue. Now, this may feel weird but it’s a good way to get to know this muscle that works so hard for us. 

I’ve never done that before.  

It’s strange. It’s a strange feeling. But it actually kind of feels good.  

Uhuh.  

Now, stick your tongue out again and this time, see if you can go from relaxed to pointed to relaxed and back and forth without tensing the rest of the face.  

It’s hard to do it without tensing your lips. You can get there eventually but just to start just begin exploring that ability.  

Maybe give them a side angle of that.  

Sure.  

Alright. At first you may feel like you need to tense the lips and jaw to tense the tongue. But eventually, you’ll be able to isolate the tension to the tongue alone.  

Then, keeping the tip of the tongue behind the front teeth where it stays for almost all of the vowel sounds. Do some tongue push-ups or push-outs to be more accurate.  

Oh, I’ve never seen that before either so you’ll stick out the middle of the tongue giving the tongue a good stretch.  

Wow, you’re really good at that. Did you learn this in acting school?  

I did.  

Okay.  

I spent a lot of time doing these exercises in school.  

Let me try.  

It’s hard if you’re not used to it.  

Yeah. It’s a little bit of a strange movement. But again, doing this will help you have a great relationship with all of what’s happening in your mouth so that when you’re working with a teacher or when you’re working with yourself and you learn about where the tongue is supposed to be, it may become easier to do that new movement or action with your tongue because you’ve been able to have these exercises.  

Yeah.  

Now, one way to help yourself is to put your hand in front of your tongue and reach towards your hand to give yourself a bit of a challenge.
Now, I will never reach my hand but it’s something to reach for.  

Now, my least favorite exercise but a great one for the tongue, we’re going to circle the tongue around the mouth in both directions. Now, imagine that you’ve got peanut butter stuck on your gums and you’re going to circle the tongue around trying to get the peanut butter out.  

Hmm, I kind of like that one.  

Yeah? 

Yeah. Why is that your least favorite.  

Because when you do it ten times one way and ten times the other, your tongue starts to really get sore. So work up to ten times one way and then you can switch to ten times the other way but you can starts with five.  

Now, drop your head, relax the tongue out of the mouth and shake.  

Oh boy. Do I have to try that?  

Give it a shot.  

Okay, better hold my hair.  

Perfect! Such relaxation.  

Yeah.  

Now, you should feel the tongue release all the way in the back of the mouth and as you do this, some saliva may fly around. If so, congratulations, you’re doing it perfectly.  

Now, let’s practice some articulation with this newly relaxed tongue.  

So that’s using the unvoiced T sound, now let’s try the voiced D sound.  

And you can just feel the very tip of your tongue on the gum right there for that nice light touch efficient T and D. Let’s try— 

And then, some fun practice. Trumpet players call this double tonging. It’s to articulate the tongue in the front with the tip of the tongue for the T and then a K sound at the back. 

Oh wow! When you do that you just feel your tongue going back and forth.  

Yeah. It’s really fun.  

Alright, nice job. Remember, this is a great way to know your tongue and maybe helpful when it comes to dealing with complicated consonant clusters that involve the tongue in words like strike, plurals and twelfth. Those are tough ones.  

Some of my students have a hard time moving their tongue without moving their jaw. So as you do some of these exercises, make sure you do some holding the jaw firm so that that tongue is moving independently like this.  

You should be able to do it without moving the jaw at all.  

If you’re having a hard time, try holding on to the jaw lightly. 

To really focus your effort on the tongue.  

I don’t know about you but when I was a kid, one of the funny faces that I love making was the fish face. The lips are two wonderful articulators for many sounds. B, P, F, V, M, W as well as rounding for vowels and diphthongs like u, uh, o, ou, au.  

Let’s practice some relaxation exercises that will help our lips become as flexible and versatile as possible. Let’s start by massaging the lips which are really mostly skin and mucus membrane, anywhere you like.  

I can’t do that because I’m using lipstick otherwise I would.  

I like to spend some time on the corners of the lips where there is some muscle that you can feel.  

Now, blow through your lips like we’re making the sound of an airplane or a boat.  

This can be a good chance to connect with your support and blow through the lips from support.  

Haha! I’m going to go higher than you.  

You know that really is hard if you have any tension in your lips.  

Yeah.  

They won’t do that. Singers do that too.  

You can start by blowing through just with the breath.  

And then add voice to it.  

Now, let’s try to fish face. Can you do it?  

It actually feels pretty good.  

Now here again, let’s drop our heads and shake the lips out.  

Do I have to do that again?  

You don’t have to if you don’t want to.  

Uh, it messes up my hair.  

Haha!  

Wow, so when you’re doing these exercises, try not to wear lipstick and do it before you do your hair.  

And pull your hair back in a bun.  

Now, let’s work on some vowel sounds with the lips so u-i.  

U-i   

So the lips start very forward and rounded and then pulled back in the corners for that e vowel.  

U-i   

And now we’re going to get the jaw involved on this next one. We’ll go from U where the lips are rounded forward into oh, oh, where the jaw will drop a bit.  

U-oh 

And now, let’s go from U-i to U-Oh. 

U-I, U-Oh 

Nice. Now, drop your head and shake your lips out again.  

And you’re done!  

When you help students find the uh sound which we consider the core sound of American English, we often suggest finding a chest resonance or a lower resonance to help them find the sound. The way to find that lower resonance is to relax your neck and throat and connect the vibrations of your sound to your body.  

Here are a few exercises to relax your neck and throat and access that body connection.  

First, let’s just relax the head down, chin to chest and massage the back and sides of the neck.  

I can do that.  

This should feel really good.  

Oh it does.  

Feel free to give your shoulders some love.  

You may also feel like sighing as you do this. A nice easy sound carried by easy breath.  

Huuh 

Great.  

Now let’s roll our head around starting slowly. Just let your head hang down with the chin on the chest and start to gently roll it back and forth. Just a little bit. Don’t go too far. Stay slow and then start rolling it up even further on each side. Then eventually you can go around the whole circle.  

How’s that feel Tom?  

That feels really good.  

Now, as you go around the full circle, if you feel any spot that feels tense, you feel a little bit ache in as you go around. Really focus on that. Maybe get your fingers and rub that out so that you can go ahead and free the neck, all the way around.  

Now drop one ear to your shoulder. While you do this, gently reach your right hand towards the ground. You’ll feel a little stretch in the right side of you neck. 

Don’t go too far. Just do what feels good to release then switch sides.  

How you doing there Tom?  

This is  great.  

Now, leading with your eyes, look over your left shoulder as far as you can but of course, don’t hurt yourself.  

And switch.  

Here’s one that may feel a little bit weird at first. Let’s start with a very relaxed face. The jaw should be relaxed and possible hanging open just a little bit.  

Let’s just sigh. Nice full breath in and a relaxed sigh out.  

Let a little sound out with the sigh.  

Let the vibrations from the sound relax the throat even more.  

Now put both hands on either side of your larynx and very gently jiggle it back and forth.  

As you do this, continue your easy breath in and easy sigh out. If you’re able to do this, then that means your throat is relaxed because it’s impossible to do this with a lot of throat tension.  

Lastly, let’s rub out hands together so they’re nice and warm and then place them around your neck, a natural heating pad. Though it cools down a little too quickly.  

Now, with your newly relaxed neck and throat, sigh on ah, and see if you can feel the vibration in the chest.  

Ah 

This relaxation will really come in handy as you work on your American English.  

A lot of my students who speak with natural throat tension because of their native language have a hard time identifying the tension because it’s so normal to them. So, one way to work with this to try to move your placement down is just to think of opening up the neck some.  

And all of these exercises will help so go through all of these exercises and then think of an opening sensation so that your voice can rest more here. Anytime there’s tension in the neck, it brings the placement up higher. But we want the American English to feel like it’s coming from here. 

You’ve learned so much about relaxing. Now, see how it affects sounds by studying different placements in this video, where I listen to you and give you feedback on your placement. This is a topic that I’m so passionate about. Don’t forget to get the free course Top 3 Ways to Master the American Accent at rachelsenglish.com/free. Please hit subscribe with notifications on and keep your learning going now with this video. I absolutely love being your English teacher. That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English. 

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