By Pam Marshalla
Q: My son is 2.5 years old. He can say 6 words: Mom (ma), ball, up (uh), gone, please (pease), and truck. I am feeling overwhelmed with how to incorporate the 3 tracks of your “Vowel Tracks” material. Can I start with one track? He gets really frustrated with wanting stuff. I am getting worried he won’t talk. The purpose of Vowel Tracks is to show how to focus on vowels as new words are being added to a child’s…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My 19-month-old cannot produce O. She is smart and has no other speech or developmental problems, but it interferes with intelligibility. My guess is that your daughter will learn to round her lips within a few weeks or months all on her own without any help. She is only one year old and has lots of time to gain this simple skill. If you were to come to my office about this, and this was the only problem, I…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I am serving a student with moderate acquired dysarthria impacting speech intelligibility due to impaired respiration, phonation, coordination, speech rate and articulatory precision. She is six-years old and her accident was 2 years ago. She can follow directions well and is aware that she sounds different than her peers. The most obvious speech quality is the slow rate, pausing, and unnatural phrasing. Her peers tend to ignore her when she is speaking because these qualities make her sound so…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a 3-year-old male client with apraxia. We are working on initial F. After two unsuccessful sessions where he completely shut down and did not want to speak, I took the pressure off, bombarded him with the sound, and rewarded him for placement. He ended up with a few good productions of the sound by the end of the session. The problem is that he came back to therapy today overgeneralizing the F. I was wondering if this…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client makes many vowel errors. Can you give me some advice about teaching them? Teaching the vowels is mostly about ear training during the production of prolonged single vowels. Don’t try to teach them within the context of words. That is way too hard. Recent research (1,2) suggests that the vowels are easier to learn relative to one another instead of one-at-a-time. Therefore work on all of them and not only the few your client needs to learn….
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Is epenthesis (adding a schwa to the end of words) a concern in a child who is close to 10 years old? It affects his social interaction. If so, how would you target this? I always see epenthesis as a normal developmental process, however ten is pretty old to still be using it and, since you said it is interfering with social communication, then it is worth targeting. If I want to get rid of it I literally spell…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I took your course on intelligibility and understand the importance of Long E in achieving the starting point for all vowels, but I cannot get my client to make a good E. It sounds flat. I would try this–– Have him say a big oral strong “Ah”. The tell him to “keep saying Ah” while he bites his back teeth together (or on a bitestick) Then tell him to “keep saying Ah” while he smiles broadly. Model this diphthong…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I am working with an adult who wants to reduce his accent. Do you have any material on this? I am not an expert in working with accents, although I have always had a secret desire to specialize in it. My professors called this “Dialect Reduction” but modern therapists call it “Code Switching.” The continuing ed classes on dialect reduction I have taken in recent years and the old books on elocution that I have read both indicate that…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My male client is five years of age. He has developmental artic errors and slurred speech. He also add a schwa at the ends of words: “Baby” is “baby-uh” and “Sand” is “Sand-uh.” What would account for this and how would you address this kind of speech sound error? Developmental errors are normal in a five year old but slurred speech is not. Something is going on. This sounds like mild dysarthria. I see the addition of the schwa…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Do you know of any good books about remediating speech (not language) in children with Down syndrome? My client is 12 years old and I think it is time to concentrate more on intelligibility after years of language work. I answered this question through a personal exchange with the SLP, however I thought I would say a few things about the topic here on my blog. Always remember that with Down syndrome you always have dysarthria and that means that…
