Articulation Archives - Page 5 of 34 - Marshalla Speech & Language

Category: Articulation

Strength vs. Motor Patterns — The Nitty Gritty

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I was at the IAOM convention in the fall of 2013, and I heard you speak on oral stability. You used your hands to describe the difference between oral strength and oral movement patterns. Can you post it here? I would like to share it with my colleagues and I can’t remember what you said. This is probably the best way I have discovered to describe the difference between movement patterns and strength of movement. Hand Movement vs. Hand…

Jaw Sliding

By Pam Marshalla

Q: Could you talk about young kids with articulation disorders who demonstrate significant jaw sliding? What causes this when there is no neuromuscular problems? Jaw sliding left and right pulls the tongue laterally away from its alignment with the palate. This causes articulation of the tongue to the palate to be off and this distorts sound quality. Treatment is to stabilize the jaw at midline. There is no telling why these things occur. All movements are asymmetrical to a certain…

E for Final “Er”

By Pam Marshalla

Q: My four-year-old client substitutes E for final Er, as in teachee/teacher. Have you seen this before? Should I be extra worried about it? To me this is just another minor problem with R. Nothing special just not very common — kids screw up R in more ways than are imaginable! The kids I have seen like this correct their errors easily. Most of their families thought the error was very cute and were sad to see it go!

Cutting Artic from School Therapy

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I am helping with policy development in my district and we’re facing significant budget cuts. We have to cut mild artic kids from the caseload. Do you have any advice about this? I am wondering if they are considering cutting services for very low functioning kids too. Kids with very low communication skills tend to be seen quite often these days, often 2-3 times per week. On the other hand, high-functioning artic kids are being seen less and less…

Finishing Up R Therapy

By Pam Marshalla

Q: My client adds E after all vocalic Rs. Example: She says “deer” as “Deer-ee”. Is this an oral-motor problem? What can I do? If your client has a correct R in some contexts but not others, then this is no longer about oral motor skill. She already can attain an R position. This is a problem of auditory discrimination. For some reason, she needs the E after the R to make the R correct in the vocalic position. Teach…

Large Tongue

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I evaluated a 4;6 male with a 4mm open bite. He used a sippy-cup and pacifier. I advised to eliminate the sippy cup and pacifier, but what was noticeable on oral exam was that he had a really long tongue. Is it possible the tongue is just too large for his oral space? Is there a quantitative way to measure this? I find this to be one of those impossible-to-answer questions. We have no way of knowing clinically if…

Tongue-Tip Protrusion

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I notice that kids who come to me for frontal lisp often have the tongue-tip protruding on T, D, N, and L as well. Should I address these errors too? I always fix tongue-tip problems on T, D, N, and L before I work on S and Z. From a motor develop perspective, correct tongue movement on S and Z is an outgrowth of tongue movement on T, D, N, and L. There is no reason why you can’t work…

Stimulating Tongue-Back Lowering

By Pam Marshalla

Q: My adolescent client speaks while holding his tongue tensed against the roof of his mouth in an “ing” position all the time. He has had years of therapy due to hearing impairment but can not produce a T, D or N at all. Most all of my oral motor experience has been to increase strength/tone. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Ahhhhhh…. You have discovered that “oral motor” needs to be much more than simply “strengthening” the mechanism. In fact,…

Brief: Teaching a Spanish R

By Pam Marshalla

Q: Do you have any tips on how to help a student produce the Spanish R trill? Two methods I have used- Start with a lingua-labial raspberry and then have the client pull the tongue in. Say the word “butter” with a clear D– “Budder”. Say it while making the tongue-tip linger on the palate longer. There also are YouTube videos about how to do this 🙂

Resistance to Teach Tongue-Back Elevation

By Pam Marshalla

Q: My student substitutes T/K and D/G. As per suggestions on your website, I am facilitating posterior tongue elevation by using a tongue depressor and having the student push against it with the posterior part of the tongue. I have been able to elicit H but not K or G. Is H the sound you refer to as a velar fricative? I need help with this method. Let me straighten this up first- H is a glottal fricative and not…