Articulation therapy is an essential step to help children who struggle with a speech impairment improve their speech clarity.
Our children are now born in a digital first world where effective communication is ever more important today. Whether it’s in a professional setting or personal relationships, being able to articulate your thoughts and ideas clearly can make a huge difference.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explore various strategies and tools that speech and language therapists (SLP) use to guide your child during articulation therapy.
SLP provide personalized guidance, exercises, and feedback to address specific speech sound difficulties. They can also plan for home practice which can help consolidate efforts made in-clinic.
Everyone progresses at their own pace, so be patient and persistent in helping your child outside in-clinic sessions with at home practice. With time and dedication, your child can master speech sounds and improve overall communication skills.
How does articulation therapy work? What should i expect in clinic?
Mastering speech sounds is a complex process that requires practice, patience, and repetition. It involves training the muscles of the mouth and coordinating them to produce specific sounds accurately.
Speech and language therapists uses these strategies, in this specific order, to help you or your child become more proficient in producing specific sounds:
- Isolation (i.e. sound is stimulable): The first step in mastering speech sounds is to practice the sound in isolation. This means saying the sound on its own without any surrounding vowels or consonants. For example, if your child is working on the /s/ sound, practice saying an extended /s/ sound. Focus on the shape of your mouth, the position of your tongue, and the airflow.
- Syllables: Once your child has mastered saying the sound by itself, have them practice the sound in all syllables, after the sound and before the sound. For example, go through a list of all syllables and put the /s/ sound before each one. (sah, suh, say, see, so, sigh, soy, soo, etc) then practice putting the /s/ behind each syllable (ees, es, iss, us, oos, etc). This allows the child to put the sound into a larger context and gets the child comfortable with saying the sound and immediately moving their mouth to form the syllable. Some syllables are more difficult for others, because some syllables require more movement of the tongue or mouth muscles.
- Word level: Once you or your child feels comfortable producing the specific sound in isolation, it’s time to move on to practicing it at the word level. Use words that contain the target sound. Start with words that start with the /s/ sound such as “sun” or “sit”. Then you can practice words that have /s/ in the middle of the word such as “messy” or “ice cream”. Finally, you can practice words with the sound at the end of the word such as “yes” and “mouse”. Start with simpler words and gradually work your way up to more complex ones. Pay attention to the specific sound you are targeting and make sure to articulate it clearly in each word.
- Phrase level: Once your child can successfully say words with their target sound, try putting the word in short phrases, such as “I see…”, “I like…” or “I want…”. This allows the child to begin to put the sound in a larger context without being too overwhelming.
- Sentence level: To further enhance your proficiency in using the target sound, practice saying sentences that include words with the sound. This will help you or your child become more proficient in using the sound in natural speech. For instance, you can say, “The sun is shining brightly,” or “She sells seashells by the seashore.” Focus on maintaining the correct sound production while also paying attention to other aspects of speech, such as intonation and rhythm.
- Carryover: The ultimate goal of mastering speech sounds is to carry over the correct production of the sound into everyday conversations. Encourage yourself or your child to use the target sound correctly in various contexts.
Keeping a kid’s attention on doing repetitive articulation therapy is difficult, digital games are a fun and engaging way to do the repetitive therapy required to improve articulation
Try 6 best speech articulation apps
How to practice with your child articulation therapy at home between clinic sessions?
If I take my child as an example, she struggles with multiple speech sounds. It would be ineffective to try to work on all speech sounds at the same time. So the recommendation from our SLT is :
- Start with one specific sound, first master it in isolation. She selected the earlier developping sounds based on her clinical experience and speech sound development milestones.
- Then practice by adding some vowels, for example /s//o/ or /s//i/. We used both instructions from the therapist as well as recommended videos online to practice at home.
- Finally move to words with additional consonants and vowels to increase difficulty. For example consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) and then CVCV, etc
- Rinse and repeat with the sound in a diffrent position, for example, middle position and then end position (final position in speech and language therapy terms)
My daughter started with /p/ and feels now very confident in saying “papa” (the word for dad in French). It took a few weeks.
Now we are working on /s/. At first my daughter pushed all the air through her nose to try /s/, so her SLP and I worked on opening her mouth and getting air to flow through her mouth, less so her nose. We used simple printed flashcards given to us during in-clinic sessions for the target sounds to practice.
We try to practice at least for 15min per day between in-clinic sessions. We cover 15-20 words, including the same word several times, in a sitting.
It is hard for me as a parent at home to do more repetitions. In order to sustain her attention longer in this home practice, we use both articulation therapy activities and articulation therapy apps to make home practice engaging. We usually get about 80-100 repetitions in a sitting. SLPs are trained (and probably have more patience!) to be able to sustain her attention long enough to do many more repetitions than we can cover at home.
It has taken a few weeks to get her more and more confident but we are making strong progress. Once we’ve mastered better this sound, our SLT will recommend the next sound to practice.
Research (Frome Loeb 2021) (1) shows that children who experience play based language development therapy help both improve communication and behavior. By using play, parents can help their children extend practice time at home and get more articulation therapy repetitions while also being an enjoyable family moment rather than ‘homework’.
Also, young children spend the majority of their time communicating through play based activities, so having them build articulation skills during their play time could eventually help articulation practice overflow from playtime into everyday life and school.
