By Pam Marshalla
Q: I am targeting /f/ in the initial position. My client is able to produce /f/ at the word level; however, he adds a /v/ after the /f/ for every word; i.e., /fvood/ for /food/. I exhausted all techniques in my bag of tricks! I am currently having him whisper words and trying to add voicing back to the word; however, that /v/ keeps popping back up. Do you have any other ideas or advice on how to target this?…
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…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: In your presentation called Improving Intelligibility in Apraxia and Dysarthria you mentioned that it is important to practice phonemes that they can do, rather than phonemes they can’t do. Why is that? That’s a good question! Van Riper and other old-time SLPs said that about 75% of every therapy session should be a rehearsal of things the child can do correctly, and about 25% should be material that is new, unfamiliar, and challenging. Most SLPs today spend most…
By Pam Marshalla
This opinion paper was originally posted as a downloadable PDF on my website, authored in September, 2011. Download the original PDF here. *** Making Speech Targets Salient Classic Auditory Training Tools for Amplifying Speech By Pam Marshalla, MA, CCC-SLP Speech-Language Pathologist Making Speech Targets Salient One of the most important things we do in articulation therapy is to make speech units stand out so the client can focus on them. Our most important tool for making speech units salient is our own…
By Pam Marshalla
There is a question that arose in a seminar recently that I want to share. I was teaching on apraxia, and using the 23 methods of jaw, lip, and tongue facilitation as the main focus of the class. The question was about a three-year-old boy who had no other consonants but /d/. He was speaking single words of 1-3 syllables, but his productions were limited to CV structure. Thus, telephone would be produced as “deh-duh-doh.” The question the therapist had…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have heard you say that oral motor treatment is not new. What do you mean? Dr. Charles Van Riper, the “father” of articulation therapy said that techniques to manipulate mouth movements and positions, for speech sound production, were centuries old in Europe. In the 1960’s, Mildren Berry and Jon Eisenson said that articulation therapy was “as old as the Hitites.” Last year I began an investigation into the use of methods to facilitate oral (jaw, lip, and tongue)…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: How should we write IEP goals for oral-motor? The answer I always give is: DON’T. Our goals are not to improve jaw, lip or tongue function. Our goals are to improve speech. Write SPEECH goals. Oral-motor techniques are just that: TECHNIQUES. Oral-motor techniques are used to help us achieve the speech goals we have set. For example, let’s say that we are working with a child who has no back sounds – no [k] or [g]. Our therapy techniques…
