By Pat Love

October 27, 1998

As Speech Pathologists, we all know that when it comes to articulation therapy of speech sounds, there is a general guideline to follow in terms of therapeutic steps. Just like there are stages of language development, each premised on the achievement of the previous stage. Therefore, generally when you work the system the system works. A good everyday example of this principle of working the system happens in many families with adolescent children. Let’s say a boy wants a car for his sixteenth birthday. Two months before his birthday, the son went up to his Dad with pleading eves and asked his father for his ultimate dream. After all, all of his friends were automatically getting cars for their memorable time in their lives. The father thinks for a minute and says, "Son, before you can receive a car for your birthday there are four things you must do. First, you must bring your grades up. Second, you cannot watch TV for two months. Third, you must read the Bible every day and fourth, you must cut your hair. The son worked diligently at his grades and quickly began receiving all A’s. The way he accomplished this feat was by not watching TV. Every morning he read one chapter in the Bible. When it came time to cut his hair, he tried several times but had a hard time accepting this challenge. Again, with pleading eyes he went to his Dad and gloated of his 4.0 G.P.A. and his ability to daily read the Bible and not watch TV. His Father looked at him and inquired about his long hair. The son proudly stated the argument that Jesus had long hair. The Dad responded with an affirmative yes, but added that Jesus walked wherever he went. Needless to say, the son did not receive the car. He emphatically learned that "the system works when you work the system". But what happens when you have a child who has highly unintelligible speech and the system that we are all familiar with does not work. In this case, we must find something that the child can do successfully and build on that skill.

Effective treatment demands answers to questions such as:

1. What level of skill has the child acquired so far?
2. Are skills, once learned, being retained?
3. Are both phonetic and phonologic skills being developed?
4. Is the rate of skill acquisition satisfactory?
5. Are skills being carried over from training to real life?
6. Are parents (caregivers) sufficiently knowledgeable and involved?
7. Does progress relate to all aspects of spoken language communication?
8. Is progress satisfactory?
9. What problems are impeding progress?
10. What skills should next be developed?

Effective learning and Teaching involves the following:

1. Ensuring the presence of prerequisites;
2. Deciding on the set (moving from the known to the unknown) to be used;
3. Selecting the child’s most appropriate sense modality;
4. Choosing the strategies to be used;
5. Achieving production of the targeted speech or language pattern;
6. Extending production in other contexts, including spoken language; and
7. Providing reinforcement of the behavior.

The positive or negative reinforcement behavior needs to provide motivating forces that include: Making things meaningful, relevant, interesting, vivid; Incorporating activity, Introducing novelty; Providing precise and speedy feedback on performance; Ensuring feelings of success; Relating learning to consequences (limit extrinsic reinforcement); Encouraging self-initiated discovery (the task becomes its own reward); Reducing over-anxiousness; Encouraging self-confidence; Being well-prepared; and Showing you care!

While speech has always been an important aspect of educational programs, I feel that the Ling approach offers one of the best in-depth, systematic, empirically based method of teaching speech. For any speech method to be effective, it must be sequential, orderly and consistent.

There are four aspects of speech communication and good speech production: Accuracy; speed; Economy of effort (with no exaggerated articulatory movements); and Flexibility. In other words, the student must have the ability to control and manipulate one’s voice as in the use of suprasegmental features such as pitch and intensity. The Ling method works towards automaticity by ensuring accuracy, speed, economy of effort, and flexibility in using the targeted speech or suprasegmental pattern.

For any speech model to be effective, it must have an order to developing speech patterns and an efficient means of evaluation. The model has serial and parallel paths of development. The Ling method provides a set pattern of developing speech moving from the known to the unknown. The actual teaching of speech occurs at the phonetic level. The phonologic level is concerned with spoken language development. The Ling method is a seven-stage model of speech development that progresses in acquisition at both the phonetic and phonologic levels. Each of the seven stages of speech acquisition consists of a number of "target" behaviors. To achieve each target behavior, a child must master a series of sub-skills. The therapist must select the most appropriate sense modality for input and feedback. These stages, or order of development, should be followed regardless of age, degree of hearing loss, speech status, and regardless of whether on is developing or remediating speech. There are no shortcuts!

The Ling method has a criterion-referenced phonetic level evaluation. The objectives of the phonetic level assessment are:

1. What neuro-muscular control does the child have?

2. What sounds are to be taught?

The composition of the phonetic analysis involves the following speech patterns:

1. Nonsegmental: These are sound patterns with no meaning. The steps are:

1. spontantaneous vocalizations;
2. vocalization on demand;
3. control of vocal intensity;
4. and control of pitch.

1. Segmental: Sound patterns with meaning. The purpose of this analysis is to determine:

1. Is the child capable of differentiated speech sound production?
2. Can speech patterns be reliably repeated?
3. Can speech patterns be alternated with other speech patterns at an acceptable rate?
4. Can segments be varied in duration, intensity, rate and pitch?

At the phonological level, the long-time critical problem is carry-over or generalization of a targeted sound from one context to another or into everyday communication through spoken language. The different aspects of spoken language are: conversation, narratives, descriptions, questions and or explanations.

Let’s go over the phonetic evaluation which I have provided for you. Here is how it is administered.

From the phonetic speech evaluation, how do you select speech targets. Initially, I would select six targets for the child.

1 Target - Suprasegmental target – either pitch or intensity can be worked on, never both at one time. Ling most often works on intensity before pitch.

2 Targets – Vowel Targets – Each vowel needs to be produced correctly at the isolation and repetition level before going on the next level.

3 Targets – Consonant Targets – Never work on a voiced and unvoiced target simultaneously. Select all the unvoiced consonants first before working on the voiced consonants. If the student is deaf, their speech is nasal and you would want to stress blowing patterns first to help eliminate nasality.

After the speech targets have been selected based on the phonetic evaluation, I determine the level at which the student is able to achieve the target. Each speech target sub-skill is written on separate index cards. At each speech session, the target is evaluated using the following criterion: Ö , Ö +, or -.

Ö = 90-100% accuracy/consistent;

Ö + = 55-89% accuracy/inconsistent; and

- = 0-54% accuracy/unsuccessful.

The criterion that I use for moving onto the next sub-skill for a speech target is three successful consistent (Ö ) therapy sessions on a speech target. The student’s achieved speech target is written on a chart in the room and the student receives an immediate reward. At the end of the year, the top three students with the most achieved speech targets receive a trophies provided by the Kiwanis Club of Champion.

Daily homework is asked of the parents. The above procedure is maintained at the elementary level only. The following is a sample of the homework sheets sent home for the elementary parents. (overhead of elementary homework page) At the middle school, the student is required to generalize his/her speech sounds using either vocabulary and/or spelling lists, or reading, math, and/or history texts. (overhead of middle school homework page)

I have provided you with several general guidelines for teaching speech using the Ling method. As I said earlier, several different sense modalities and strategies are used simultaneously and these guidelines give many different illustrations of that. (Review Speech Teaching Tips)

I hope you can use these techniques during your therapy sessions and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have or help you set up this type of program with any of your students.

Motivating Forces Include:

1. Accuracy
2. Speed
3. Economy of Effort
4. Flexibility

Working towards Automaticity!

• The provision of a set – moving from known knowledge to the unknown.

• The seven-stage model of speech development – progressing in acquisition at both the phonetic and phonologic levels.

• The selection of the most appropriate sense modality for input and feedback.

• Ensuring generalization of a targeted sound from one context to another.

• Criterion-referenced evaluation

1. spontantaneous vocalizations;
2. vocalization on demand;
3. control of vocal intensity;
4. and control of pitch.

2. Segmental: Sound patterns with meaning. The purpose of this analysis is to determine:

1. Is the child capable of differentiated speech sound production?
2. Can speech patterns be reliably repeated?
3. Can speech patterns be alternated with other speech patterns at an acceptable rate?
4. Can segments be varied in duration, intensity, rate and pitch?

1 Target – Suprasegmental target

• 2 Targets – Vowel Targets

• Each session, the speech target is evaluated accordingly:

* Ö = 90-100% accuracy/consistent;

* Ö + = 55-89% accuracy/inconsistent;

* - = 0-54% accuracy/unsuccessful.

• In order to move to the next skill level,

Presented by Pat Love

October 27, 1998

Kent State University

Speech Pathology and Audiology Department

• But be aware of blends created by co-articulation when producing a new consonant-vowel combination. Eg. Reinforce the phoneme /f/ in foot or off but not frog or flag.

1. Attend to phoneme changes due to co-articulation.

• Eg. A glass of (ov) water

Jumped (t) with me

Jumped (d) over me

1. Mimic child’s production to analyze speech errors!
2. Encourage the child to self-monitor and self-correct speech.
3. Correct speech in private but develop a few cues to signal self-correction in group situations. Eg. Hand signal to alter volume.
4. When phoneme is misarticulated in phonology, rehearse it in repeated syllabic babble phonetically and then return into phonology.

1. Definition – The velopharyngeal port is sufficiently open to route a substantial portion of the breath stream through the nasal cavities.
2. Prevention of nasality is accomplished by teaching the four basic velar targets and movements (#12) unambiguously and by babbling non-nasal syllables until the child has established orality.
3. Do blowing exercises using feathers, cotton balls, pinwheel, bubbles, balloons, horns, tissues, ping pong balls, and paper; blowing out a flame and blowing through a straw.
4. Whisper the vowel sounds.
5. Whistling has been found to be effective as a bridge between blowing exercises and speech production.
6. Increasing the speaking tempo might produce a reduction in perceived nasality.
7. Ensure the presence of the /i/ and /u/ so that there is a tangible breath stream sustained to more objects mentioned above.
8. Practice the vowel sounds using a wet finger and extend the finger outward while the child feels the oral breath stream.
9. Use fricatives /f/,/O/, / /, and /s/ with various vowels and plosives to maintain the oral breath stream.
10. Syllables ending in /m/ should be released with and audible fricative such as /fam/, /fim/, and /O^m/. Syllables beginning with /m/ should also be arrested with a fricative such as /m^f/.
11. When velopharyngeal closure cannot be accomplished in a speech context, then non-speech exercises should be initiated:

• Sucking exercises – holding a piece of paper at the end of a drinking straw.
• Downward movements of the velum are accomplished by vigorous sniffing or blowing out through the nose.
• Raised velum movements of the velum are accomplished by yawning, sucking, blowing and whistling.

• Alternating sniffing with yawning, sucking, blowing, or whistling may help strengthen velar action.

1. Velar movements in articulation:

• Velum raised – all vowels, all consonants, except nasals.

• Velum lowered – all three nasal consonants: /m/, /n/, and / /.

• Velum initially raised finally lowered – syllables such as:

/f^m/, /sim/, / an/, baen/, /pa /, and /tIn/.

Velum initially lowered, finally raised – syllables such as /m^f/,

/nI /, /maO/, and /naIs/.

 Language Samples: Blow the match!

Blow it up!

Blow it down!

Blow it hard!

Blow the bubble!

Blow it to me!

Blow it again!

Blow it around!

Blow hard!

Should be able to chew with his mouth closed!

Does not have to be learned, but it should be repeated so that the sound of sucking is learned.

 Pat Love

October 27, 1998

Formal Education

1. B.A. - Ohio University; M.A. – Kent State University.
2. Master’s Thesis – "The Effects of Competition and Therapy on the Speech of Hearing-Impaired Adolescents".
3. Professional Organizations –

1. Licensed by American Speech and Hearing

Association; Member of ASHA.

B. Licensed by Ohio Board of Speech Pathology, Member of OSHA.

C. Member of OSSPEAC (Ohio School Speech Pathology Education Audiology Coalition).

E. Member of A.G.Bell association.

F. Member of Phi Beta Kappa Educational Sorority.

1. Worked with the Deaf for 15 years and have worked with the hearing population for 3 years.
2. Have taken numerous sign language courses in Signing Exact English and American Sign Language.
3. Supervised countless Speech Practicum Students from both the Deaf Education Program and the Speech Pathology Program at K.S.U.
4. C.F.Y. Supervisor for Warren Otologic Group’s Speech Pathologist and have worked for them periodically over the years.
5. Observed the first cochlear implant surgery in Trumbull County and have services seven students with cochlear implants.
6. Certified Reading Recovery teacher since May, 1994, and am one of a select few servicing only Deaf student in the United States.

October 27, 1998

Informal Education

1. Parents – Live in North Carolina, Former mayor of

Lake Lure.

2. One Sister – Lives in Akron and is a research nurse for

Infectious Disease at Akron City Hospital

3. Married - Ed

4. Have 3 children:

Bryan, 24 years; West Point Graduate; Married and stationed in Colorado Springs, Colorado at Fort Carson.

Brice, 22 years; Senior in the school of Pharmacy at Ohio State University; Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity.

Hali, 21 years; Junior in the school of Communications majoring in Public Relations at Ohio University; Pi Beta Phi Sorority.

5. Member of Kiwanis International

1. Served as Distinguished President of Champion Kiwanis.
2. Served as Distinguished Secretary of Champion Kiwanis.
3. Served as Lieutenant Governor of Division 25.
4. Served on the Foundation Board and am currently the Vice President.
5. Serving as Membership Chairperson for Ohio