By Pam Marshalla
Sooooooooo many questions about teaching S come in that I want to take this opportunity to write out the simplest most direct method that therapists have been using since early in the 20th century. This method is reported in just about every articulation therapy textbook ever written. The oldest reference I have seen for it is Scripture (1912). Scripture’s book is one that Van Riper recommended. There are dozens of ways to do this, but this is the basic procedure––…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a client who has what you call an “Omni Lisp” meaning that there is no central groove at all and the air comes out the entire front of the mouth from L to R. It sounds lateral because some of the sound is. I have tried your “Long T Method” with this client but it doesn’t seem to be as effective. Have you listened to his T through the straw? I will bet it sounds flat and…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client lowers the jaw too much when he speaks, and he has a frontal lisp. He tends to clench the jaw when I tell him to hold the jaw up. I may have taught him this when using a bite stick to position the jaw. Not sure what to do now. As you have discovered, making a strong crushing bite on a firm object is not what he needs. The term “jaw stability” does not mean “jaw rigidity.”…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I attended a workshop of yours and recall the recommendation to have the student brush the sides of the tongue to elicit the R sound. I can’t find the method in your handout. Where is it? It is SOOOOOOOO critically important to understand the PURPOSE of a method! One does not brush the sides of the tongue to elicit R and I would NEVER recommend that. Instead one brushes the sides of the tongue to AWAKEN the tactile system there. …
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Have you tried the SmartPalate? I am considering trying it with a few clients who have stubborn sound errors. I would like some input from people who used it first. The SmartPalate is a clinical electropalatometry tool and I have not used it. I have read all about it, however, and I am sure it will be very useful for some clients, but there are ways to do this without the expense. The SmartPalate provide visual feedback about place of articulation,…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have discovered that a mirror helps my young clients understand the idea of breath support for speech. Kids notice that their breath makes a fog on a mirror. I teach them to make longer and longer exhalations to make more and more fog and then they draw smiley faces in the fog on the mirror. Fun! Can you comment? My reading of historic artic books has revealed to me that we all end up developing the same methods…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client has no back sounds, and he substitutes Sh and Ch for S. I cannot get a good S out of him. I have tried straws and the Ts technique you talk about, but he always makes a Sh or Ch. What do you think I should try next? I think you should try putting more attention on his tongue-tip to stimulate S and Z. The following excerpt about improving awareness and control of the tongue-tip is from…
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…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My 6-year-old male client keeps his lips in a perpetual smile that is interfering with intelligibility when he speaks. He appears to have low muscle tone. He also has great difficulty producing multisyllabic words. I am wondering where to begin? Your client has lip retraction associated with mild dysarthria. How do I know he has dysarthria? Because he has speech distortion related to neuromuscular disturbance. That is the very definition of dysarthria. I have written the following about lip…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Do you know if chewing tools are effective in correcting open mouth posture in a 2-year-old? Is there any research on this? The question reveals that you are assuming too much one-to-one correspondence between methods of oral stimulation and results. Chewy tools are designed to facilitate up-and-down jaw movements, and to increase the amount of time a client keeps his jaw in the “up” position. That is all they will do. To assume that chewing on a chewy tool or…
