When I see a child who is unable to make (articulate)
accurately, the first thing I ask myself is - Can the child hear the speech
sound?
We use lots of different sounds in the English language and for
these to be produced correctly children need hear the difference between them
first. This is known as phoneme
discrimination e.g. Did I say s or sh?
Some children cannot hear the difference between sounds for
example: I may say ‘take a sip’ and they
hear it as ‘take a ship’. As you can see, this inability to hear the difference
between ‘s’ and ‘sh’ changes the whole meaning of the word they hear!
Why can’t my child hear the sound?
This is a question I am asked a lot. Sometimes it may be due
to a hearing problem such as glue ear (Otitis media) either in the past or
presently – this is why we always recommend a hearing check. A hearing problem
will mean that the child is perceiving the sound differently to us and
therefore cannot make the distinction.
However, there are
many children who have perfect hearing but cannot make the distinction,
unfortunately there is not a clear answer but it maybe that when they were
developing their early speech skills they made an ‘error’ and stored the sound
incorrectly.
Sound perception research
Newborn babies can perceive all the speech sounds of the
entire world’s languages (about 600 consonants and 200 vowels!!). At about 6
months of age, they start to lose the ability distinguish between many sounds
that are not used in their language. So, for example, a child who mainly hears English
loses the ability to tell the difference between different types of ‘t’ sound
(e.g., a dental /t/ and a retroflex /t/), whereas a child exposed to Urdu would
retain this ability.
This phenomenon has been called perceptual narrowing or perceptual reorganisation (Werker et. Al. 2012).
Ideas to support
the distinction of sounds
·
Can they tell you which sound you are saying
from a choice of 2 or 3? Younger
children often enjoy relating speech sounds to pictures or actions rather than
letters, e.g. Using the Jolly Phonics pictures and saying “s” when you see the
snake.
·
Ask the child to clap, bang a drum or press a
buzzer when they hear a specific sound e.g. “we are going to listen for ssssss,
hit the drum when you hear sssss” proceed to say a sequence of speech sounds
including the target. E.g. ‘t, sh, s, m, k’.
o
If they don’t hear it repeat and say ‘I heard
sss, we need to hit the drum!’
o
You can provide them with a picture card so the child
can remember what sound they are listening for.
·
Expose the child to the sound as much as
possible!
Remember!
In these games you are focusing on the sounds, not the
letters e.g. kite and carrot begin with the same sound even though
they are different letters.
Sophie Harding
Speech and Language Therapist
BSc (Hons) MRCSLT MHCPC PROMPT-Trained
(Werker, J.F., Yeung, H.H., & Yoshida, K. (2012). How do
infants become native speech perception experts? Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 21(4), 221-226.)
