This advice-column-style blog for SLPs was authored by Pam Marshalla from 2006 to 2015, the archives of which can be explored here. Use the extensive keywords list found in the right-hand column (on mobile: at the bottom of the page) to browse specific topics, or use the search feature to locate specific words or phrases throughout the entire blog.
Moving Across Syllables / Trial-and-Error
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Do you like the “Moving Across Syllables” program? My supervisor says it works.
All methods work for the right client at the right time. All you can do is try and see. If it works for him, it works. If not, perhaps it will work later on, or perhaps you need to find a different plan for him. The old-timers called this “trial-and-error.”
Trial-and-error is not old-fashioned or out-of-step with modern therapy. It is the basis of what we do every day.
The following about trial-and-error is from my next book, The Marshalla Guide to be published in 2014––
“The concept of trial-and-error seems to have been relegated to history after the 1970’s and some modern SLPs have begun to view it as old-fashioned, out-of-date, primitive, unsophisticated, insignificant, un-scientific, and non-evidence-based. Modern speech-language pathologists should never forget however that the antecedent events––the actual techniques themselves––are always selected through a process of trial-and-error. Always. One makes an educated guess about the method to be used today just as SLPs always have always done. That guess is based upon a thorough scientific understanding of the process of speech sound production.”