Elocution or speech 'refinement' for a 10 year old

[Ironfloor269]

DD is 10. Her speech is not very clear. This is mainly because she speaks too fast and doesn't enunciate. We do tell her to speak slower and enunciate, and when she does, it's much clearer.

Please can someone suggest what we could do to help her speech to improve? Off the top of my head, I can only think of online elocution lessons/speech and drama.

Thank you in advance.

Probably a bit difficult these days (Covid), but I would be asking for a speech & language therapist referral via GP so they can assess what the reason for her fast speech pattern/lack of enunciation is.

Have school raised any concerns about her speech?

I used to talk really quickly as a child, I was quite shy initially and rarely said anything then as my confidence grew everything in my brain basically tumbled out and it was almost like I felt I had to get it all out in case I got scared again. I joined a junior choir when I was about 9 and that really helped, focus on breathing and phrasing and built on my new found confidence. I still speak fairly quickly if I'm really excited about something, but people in my region are not known for being quiet and quietly spoken anyway!

I expect that YouTube has lots of fun videos to help.

Drama.
I know this will be more difficult at the moment, but maybe a local group has moved on line for now.
Drama is all about the audience, so you are taught to be clear, to pace your speech, watch for audience reaction, project appropriately etc, as well as responding to the other actors.

Lamda do spoken word grades, they have lots of kids doing it for these reasons...worth a look. (Not sure what they call it)

Second drama. I also did LAMDA exams up to grade 7 but in acting not spoken word.

Thank you, everyone, for your very helpful replies. Based on them, I've just gone and booked DD in for some LAMDA speech & drama classes (via zoom).