6 Speech Therapy Exercises to Improve Pronunciation

Here are 6 tips from a speech-language pathologist to help children who have difficulty pronouncing certain sounds.

To help parents or caregivers make pronunciation exercises fun, Caroline Martin, a speech-language pathologist and author, has designed a series of magnetic books. These books, accompanied by manipulative pieces, help keep a child's attention longer. They encourage interactivity and thus facilitate the integration of acquired knowledge.

1-You can stimulate children's phonological awareness and awakening to language sounds by looking at the pronunciation collection books with them.

First, while looking at the book with the child, you can emphasize the specifically targeted sound yourself. This makes the targeted sound salient via an auditory 'bombardment' of that sound. Each book in the 'pronunciation' collection targets a specific sound, in a particular word position (beginning, middle, or end of a word).

For example, you can stimulate awareness of the 'f' sound by accentuating the sound every time it appears in a word.

E.g.: "The fffant is sniffing a ffflower, The fffant is playing the ffflute, The fffant is putting on a fffscarf..."

For all children, good phonological awareness is a great springboard to pre-reading skills.

2-You can also draw the child's attention to how to place their articulators to produce the sound.

 

For the 'f' sound, you need to place your upper teeth on your lower lip and push air out. You can place the pictogram near your face and tell the child: "Do you hear the 'f' sound in 'fffant'? I place my teeth like this... to make the 'f' sound in 'fffant'. How do you place your teeth? Wow, you can place them like me!"

A child who can produce a sound in isolation may still have difficulty producing it in more spontaneous speech.

 

They may need to gradually progress from isolated sounds to isolated words (first a repetitive word, then variable words), to structured sentences, and then to sentences in spontaneous discourse. Our books help to work through this progression while having fun.

 

3- Stimulate a sound in an isolated word that is repetitive from one page to another.

 

Our books allow for the stimulation of a sound in a very repetitive isolated word throughout the activity. This is the case for the subject that reappears on each page. You can repeatedly stimulate the production of the isolated word by asking the child to produce the word to get the magnet and then place it in the book.

With the ant book, you can structure the activity so that the child only has to say the word 'fffant' by showing them only that pictogram.

Depending on your child, the difficulties might be normal for their age, but a speech therapy consultation might be helpful.

Now that we've seen how to stimulate a repetitive isolated word with our books, let's add some variations...

4- Stimulate a sound in the context of an isolated word that varies from page to page.

The complementary nouns on each page of our books maintain the pronunciation objective targeted by the book. Show only this magnet to the child so that they only have to say this word.

Here we have: "fffleur (flower), fffoulard (scarf), fffeu (fire), fffenêtre (window)..."

Be careful, when working on a sound, the adult's feedback must be related to that targeted sound and not to all the other sounds that make up the word. This allows the child to focus their energy in the right place. If you are targeting the 'f' sound, you could therefore praise the child who says 'foumi' for having correctly placed their teeth for the targeted sound, even if they omitted the 'R'. In the same vein, if you are using the ant book to stimulate the 'f' sound and the child omits or transforms the 'l' in 'flute', you can still praise them for having correctly placed their teeth to make the 'f' sound (be precise in your feedback).

Regarding requests for corrections, if you want the child to continue the activity, it is better to avoid overloading them with correction requests beyond their abilities. If you see that your demands are too high for their abilities, simply give them good models without expecting them to produce the sounds. It is recommended to choose a language difficulty level that allows the adult to give 8-9 positive feedback for the targeted objective out of 10 child productions, and 1-2 requests for corrections.

5- Stimulate the targeted sound in words mastered in isolation, but this time in a context of producing structured sentences.

The books then allow for the stimulation of the targeted sound in words already worked on, but this time in a sentence context, which represents an additional degree of difficulty.

For example, we have: "The fffant is playing the fffflute." and "The fffant is putting on a fffscarf..."

Continue to give specific feedback to the child. If necessary, give them some clues to remind them of what is expected. Example clues: take turns in the activity and continue to emphasize the sound being worked on, place your mouth as you would like the child to place theirs to produce the sound, verbalize the tips that may have been helpful for the child in the previous steps.

6- Stimulate the targeted sound in a context of producing more spontaneous utterances.

The pages of the book contain additional elements with the targeted sound that can encourage more spontaneous comments and unstructured utterances.

For example, "Did you see what the fffant has on its head... it's wearing a fffparty hat... Is it the fffant's fffparty? Happy fffparty, fffant!"

Another example: "Oh no! The fffant is putting on its fffscarf, do you think it's hot??? No... it's very fffcold."

These general tips certainly do not replace an evaluation and follow-up with a speech-language pathologist, but they may help you understand the micro-progressions sometimes necessary for a child to acquire sound production in spontaneous speech.

It is normal for children not to produce certain sounds at certain age groups. It is best to consult a speech-language pathologist to place sounds when the situation does not correct itself. Several factors can be at play, and only a speech-language pathologist can identify them and make a plan to remedy them. The speech-language pathologist can also guide you on the sounds and syllabic structures to prioritize with YOUR child.

The speech-language pathologist who knows your child is best placed to guide you.