SPEECH / ARTICULATION / SOUND THERAPY

1. Articulation: An articulation disorder* involves difficulty producing sounds. Sounds can be substituted, omitted, added or distorted. The term phonological process is used to describe patterns of sound errors. These errors can make it challenging for people to understand the child. Articulation therapy focuses on the motor aspects of speech production. Articulation therapy involves implementing techniques focused on teaching your child new sounds in place of substituted or omitted sounds, and then gradually introducing these sounds into syllables, words, phrases, sentences and eventually into conversational speech.

Examples:

– "tat" for "cat"
– "ope" for "open"
– "baf" for "bath"
– "pi me uh" for "pick me up"
– "wun" for "run"

2. Phonemic Awareness: Phonemic awareness involves the skills necessary to hear, identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words; i.e. blending, segmenting and deleting sounds.

– Pre-reading Skills / Letter-Sound Recognition: hearing, identifying and manipulating the individual sounds in words is a "pre-reading" skill that helps children learn and understand that sounds are actually building blocks used to form and spell words. Please contact Victoria for further information regarding the details of therapy for pre-reading skills and letter-sound recognition.

* An articulation disorder and difficulty with pre-reading skills / letter- sound recognition can occur concomitantly or separately.