R-D-R-R-R: Gobbling Up Sounds

Almost every therapist who works with children has at least one with this problem - the pesky R sound. This semi-vowel is one of the most difficult to train, because, unlike many other sounds, it can’t easily be illustrated in the mouth. Minor changes in tongue position and "bunching" are the difference between a nice, clear ‘r’ and a sloppy ‘w’ sound, and lots of kids struggle with that.

Video Voice has a number of ways to help them learn how to produce this sound correctly, but for today, we’ll just talk about one of them, the F2/F1 Gobble display. In this Pac-Man-style game, the speaker uses his voice to erase the dots on the screen. The live feedback is very powerful. It lets him "play" with his voice and get instantaneous response while he explores different articulator positions. Being able to find and maintain correct articular position helps ingrain the kinesthetics of production of this sound.

Here’s a simple way to get going. Use the Formant Menu’s Free Form F2/F1 Match mode and produce a sample of the R target in isolation. We always recommend that you do several trials of a sound, looking for consistency in density and location of the dots before defining one as the model. Once you’ve decided to Use one, click the Match Mode control to switch to the Gobble format. Video Voice will prompt "Say ‘rrrr’" using your voice target, and you can have the child try to Gobble it up. If it’s too easy to succeed, just raise the Goal (percent erasure required to win above the default 80%).

Want to get rid of all the other vowels, leaving only the R symbol ? Just double-click on that symbol, and all the others will magically disappear. 

But what if you’d like to get rid of everything except the R and U, so the child can see the similar location of the two sounds on the screen (and in the mouth!). That’s easy, too. Click on one of the vowels, and when the small instructional box appears, click and drag any unwanted symbols off the edge of the screen. Then click Apply to temporarily save that more limited vowel chart for use in the current session. (Using Save will erase the other symbols until you reactivate them all with the Adjust button, so you may not want to take that more permanent action.)

Then, play, play, play! You’ll be amazed at how long the children will stay on task, how entertained and motivated they’ll be as they gobble up the sound dots.

By the way, if you have used New Session to activate a data folder, you can Save any Free Form target for reuse in subsequent sessions, so you won’t have to go through the definition process each time. Just use the Stored Models option from the Formant Menu to retrieve them later on.

This example presents work on the R in isolation, but you can just as easily set up word targets to let the child practice vocabulary words containing the R sound using these same steps.

That’s it for today! We’ll be back later to tell you more ways to use Video Voice for work on R and other sounds.

Video Voice Support Team
1-800-537-2182
mv@videovoice.com