Phonological Development Archives - Page 6 of 7

Tag: Phonological Development

Minor Toddler Articulation Errors

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I have a client, 2.5 years, who substitutes “F” for “K,” “B,” “D,” “G,” and “T” in initial “R” and “L” clusters. “W” replaces the glides. I am not concerned about the glides. Is the child just over-learning the “F” sound? The replacement of a single phoneme for a cluster is called “Coalescence.” Hodson and Paden define this as the “replacement of two adjacent phonemes by a single new one which retains features from both of the original phones”…

When to Treat Later-Developing Sounds

By Pam Marshalla

Q: At what age should my school speech therapist begin working on my son’s “R” sound? Would you address it before “S,” “Z,” and “Th”? When do you address these errors? Do missing teeth affect the decision making in this process at all? Yours is a very simple yet complicated question. First, these are what we call “later-developing sounds.” When a child has errors on these sounds, most SLP’s in the public schools wait until the kids are 7, 8,…

Stimulating L

By Pam Marshalla

Q: How do you teach L for a client who cannot do it at all? These are the types of things I do in whatever order fits the needs of the client: Primitive Movement Teach a primitive L that is made with jaw movement. Have the client stick out his tongue-tip so that it sits between the teeth, and then have him move the jaw up-and-down. This is going to sound and look like the way a baby “lolls” –…

References and Advice for Apraxia and Dysarthria

By Pam Marshalla

Q: Do you have any advice on working on reading with a six-year-old child with severe apraxia and dysarthria? This child is having many difficulties with phonological and phonemic awareness and is struggling in all academic areas. Are there any reading programs that you know of that would help? I am already working on phonological awareness skills with her. First, if he is struggling in “all academic areas” there is more wrong than just apraxia and dysarthria. Apraxia and dysarthria…

Normative Data and Enrollment

By Pam Marshalla

Q: It seems that every SLP has a different opinion on phoneme development and the age at which sounds should be treated. For example, some SLP’s work on R at age 6 while others wait until clients are age 7 or 8. What is your opinion on sound development? I have been re-studying the developmental articulation norms for the past two years in preparation for my next book, and I have to admit the data is all over the place….

Eliciting Gross /t/ and /d/

By Pam Marshalla

Q: My client in second grade cannot make /t/ or /d/ at all. I have tried all kinds of things to activate the tongue tip, but he still persists on saying /k/ and /g/. How can I elicit /t/ and /d/? Since you have tried so many techniques to facilitate refined tongue-tip elevation that haven’t worked, I would revert to a more infantile way to elicit these anterior consonants. This is the way babies learn to make a /d/: They…

The Cycles Approach to Therapy

By Pam Marshalla

Q: Can you explain the “cycles approach”? To work in cycles means to work only one week at a time on target phonemes or phonological processes. Therapy progresses through the weeks regardless of whether the client masters the target. For example, the client may have trouble maintaining /s/ in the clusters Sp, St, Sk, Sm, Sn, Sl, Sw, Str, Spr, and so forth. Using cycles, therapy would address one cluster per week. For more information, read the original authors. Look…

Advice for Pierre-Robin Syndrome

By Pam Marshalla

Q: Can you give our family advice about stimulating speech, language, and feeding in a 14-month old girl with Pierre-Robin Syndrome? She is making some sounds and is pretty smart. We have read your book Becoming Verbal with Childhood Apraxia and it has helped us understand about stimulating sound and word productions. Although she continues to be fed through a G-tube, she now is eating many different foods orally. Let me just make some straightforward statements about how I would…

When /d/ Is the Only Consonant

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…

Before /r/ Can Emerge – Early /r/ Therapy

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I have a severely apraxic sixth grader who omits /r/ in blends. Is it appropriate to teach her to use /w/ instead in order to increase intelligibility? For example, can I teach her to say “bwick” for “brick”? I always take the liberty of teaching w/r in these cases. The /w/ holds the place until the client is ready for /r/. This is exactly what many typically developing children do in the younger years. I also add a schwa…