How do tongue twisters compare to other pronunciation training methods in Russian

Tongue twisters are a popular and effective method for pronunciation training in Russian, particularly for practicing difficult sound combinations and improving articulation agility. Compared to other pronunciation training methods, tongue twisters have some distinct advantages and roles:

Effectiveness of Tongue Twisters in Russian Pronunciation Training

• Tongue twisters (“скороговорка”) are phrases designed to be challenging to articulate correctly and rapidly, naturally forcing precise and clear pronunciation. They help learners overcome common articulation errors by repeatedly practicing complex sound sequences. ^{1, 2, 3}
• They are useful for memorization and automated oral practice, which supports the development of tongue movement coordination and speech muscle agility. ^{3, 4}
• Tongue twisters address specific articulation problems typical for Russian learners, such as noise consonants’ production, contributing to accent reduction and clearer speech. ²
• They can be used as a fun and engaging form of linguistic exercise, promoting motivation and active learning in pronunciation training sessions. ³

Comparison to Other Methods

• Other Russian pronunciation training methods typically include systematic phonetic drills, phoneme-specific exercises, listening and repetition practices, and the use of electronic or integrated phonetic courses. ⁵
• While drills and electronic phonetic training can provide systematic and diagnostic instruction, they may lack the engaging, game-like quality of tongue twisters that encourage spontaneous repetition and playful articulation. ^{5, 3}
• Tongue twisters complement these methods by targeting real-time articulation speed and precision, which is harder to develop through static drills. ⁴
• Advanced methods such as computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) and visual feedback tools (e.g., tongue movement visualization) are emerging and offer precise feedback but may not always be accessible or engaging for all learners. Tongue twisters remain widely accessible and culturally embedded tools for Russian learners. ^{6, 7}

Summary

Tongue twisters in Russian pronunciation training provide an effective, memorable, and practical way to improve articulation skills, particularly in producing challenging consonant clusters and sounds not found in the learner’s native language. They are often used alongside other pronunciation techniques such as targeted drills, phonetic courses, and sometimes technology-assisted training. The key advantage of tongue twisters is their ability to train fluency and accuracy in a motivating, game-like format that enhances oral motor skills and sound differentiation. ^{2, 4, 3, 5}

This makes tongue twisters a valuable complement rather than a replacement for other, more systematic pronunciation training methods in Russian language learning.

References

• TONGUE-TWISTER AS A METHOD OF STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION TRAINING AT HANOI UNIVERSITY (INITIAL STAGE OF TRAINING)

• Phonetic articulation of Russian noise consonants produced by Chinese-speaking students

• Russian barbarism appering Georgian vocabulary – Focusing on negative appearing in literature and political speech

• Evaluating Effectiveness of Articulation Practice with Tongue-twister Movement Distance Using Ultrasound.

• PHONETICS IN TEACHING RUSSIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

• Computer-assisted Pronunciation Training — Speech synthesis is almost all you need

• Visual Feedback of Tongue Movement for Novel Speech Sound Learning

• WAYS OF TRAINING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION THROUGH TONGUE TWISTERS: EXPERIENCE OF POLTAVA UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND TRADE

• TONGUE TWISTERS IN PRONUNCIATION CLASS

• PHONETIC STYLISTIC DEVICES AND THEIR FUNCTIONS IN ENGLISH TONGUE-TWISTERS

• Teaching Students Pronunciation Skills through Tongue Twister Exercises

• Think Before You Speak——The Construction of English Language Thinking With the Help of Tongue Twisters In College English Class Teaching

• THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING TONGUE TWISTER TECHNIQUETO TEACH PRONUNCIATION TO EFL STUDENTS (Quasi Experimental at the Eleventh Grade of SMKN 1 Mojoanyar MojokertoIn Academic Year of 2017/2018)

• Looking for an Eil Pronunciation Standard: A Literature Review and Classroom Experience from the Russian L1 Perspective

• PANCETTA: Phoneme Aware Neural Completion to Elicit Tongue Twisters Automatically

• The effects of lingual training: a systematic review with meta-analysis

• TwistList: Resources and Baselines for Tongue Twister Generation

• YouGlish: A web-sourced corpus for bolstering L2 pronunciation in language education

• On the possibility of measuring the level of articulatory skills

• THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TONGUE TWISTERS TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ ABILITY TO PRONOUNCE FRICATIVE CONSONANTS AND LONG VOWELS

• Differential substitution: a contrastive hierarchy account

• Linguistic disfluencies in Russian-speaking typically and atypically developing children: individual variability in different contexts

• Dissimilation, Assimilation and Vowel Reduction: Constraint Interaction in East Slavic Dialects with so-called Dissimilative Akan’e and Jakan’e

• Algorithms For Automatic Accentuation And Transcription Of Russian Texts In Speech Recognition Systems

• Foreign accent conversion in computer assisted pronunciation training

• Word-wise intonation model for cross-language TTS systems