Examination of sound pronunciation in children: methodology and exercises

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

I want to say right away that children's speech disorders are one of the most common and common problems. A huge number of parents, when their baby is under the age of five, undergo a sound pronunciation examination with him and struggle with such a problem. But the difficulty also lies in the fact that parents most often fall into one of the extremes.

Worry, panic ahead of time

For example, when a child is 1, 5-2, 5 years old, and he does not pronounce certain sounds, you should consult a doctor. Especially if this applies to difficult consonances W, L, R. And with such a problem, parents immediately run to examine the sound pronunciation. But these sounds are complex, and a young child is simply not yet able to pronounce them correctly due to their age. That is why he can either skip them or replace them with simpler letters that he can speak correctly.

Alsoup to a certain age, this is also a physiological feature, let's say, a conditional norm. This topic is covered in more detail in Konovalenko's book Express Examination of Sound Pronunciation.

Second option

The other extreme is when parents take too long, do not pass the examination of sound pronunciation, do not pay attention to the problem, believing that this is an age feature. They believe that everything will pass by itself, the sounds will rise by themselves. That's why mothers don't take action.

Of course, ideally you don't need to go to extremes, you need to find a middle ground and stick to it. How to do it?

Know age norms

Knowledge will help you not to panic ahead of time. That is, there are age periods when certain sounds are simply physiologically quite difficult for a child. He is unable to pronounce them. When parents know this, they stop panicking, because they understand that this is just an age factor.

And vice versa, if adults understand that the sound should have appeared according to the norms, but the child does not have it or he replaces it with another one in speech. Then the parents understand that there is no need to waste time, but rather do something as soon as possible, consult, undergo a sound pronunciation examination and start helping the child in a playful way so that the sound finally appears and gets up correctly.

Therefore, knowing the age norms is very, very important.

The second point is to develop speech and non-speech hearing

What is it for?In order for a child to correctly pronounce certain sounds, he must first hear it correctly. That is, he must have normal physiological hearing, he must correctly perceive both non-speech and speech sounds. And here, too, there is a nuance. Even if a child's physiological hearing is good, sharp by nature, this does not guarantee that everything will be in order. This happens because nature has it so. The pronunciation of sounds is initially imperfect and you need to help the child develop them and put them correctly. And this is in the power of every parent.

Non-speech sounds are all the sounds of the surrounding world, except for speech itself. For example, this is the roar of the wind, crackling snow, raindrops, and so on.

Speech hearing is already the ability to distinguish where one word ends and another begins, to determine the pace, intonation, that is, all the subtleties of speech. To further understand the topic, you can read the works of Konovalenko “Sound Pronunciation Survey”.

Articulation gymnastics

Until the age of four, it is recommended to do such a workout at least several times a day, that is, it is not necessary, but desirable. You can use at least the simplest exercises, it is not necessary to immediately take on the entire complex of articulation gymnastics.

You can start doing it from the age of one, and sometimes even earlier. For example, you can use the following exercises: invite the child to make faces, show the tongue and hide it, puff out the cheeks and pull them in, make the lips look like a bow, and much more. All thesetasks are quite accessible to the child and help to strengthen his speech muscles: lips, cheeks and tongue. Such a complex helps the baby with the pronunciation of certain sounds. At an older age, if you do such gymnastics, it will be easier for him to properly position these organs.

And with these three points, including knowledge of norms, development of skills and gymnastics, parents help the child when he still physiologically does not say anything. Adults create favorable conditions for the correct production of sounds.

Speech therapy examination of sound pronunciation

When a child already has some kind of delay, whether it is the sinking of individual sounds or a general violation of sound pronunciation, parents should even more help the child overcome difficulties as quickly as possible.

Before moving on to the materials for the examination of sound pronunciation, it is worth answering the question of why it is necessary to consult a speech therapist when there is any delay:

1. Mom is not always actually able to objectively assess the state of sound pronunciation. And there are several reasons for this:

• Gets used to the way a child talks. That is, she no longer hears if there are any defects. When a mother is very often with a child, her hearing becomes a little dull, and she does not always understand whether the child pronounces this or that sound correctly or not.
• Can understand a child even without words. What can we say when a child pronounces sounds a little incorrectly.
• Sometimes you can’t even admit to yourself that there is a problem and you need to take someactions. Sometimes you want, like an ostrich, to hide your head in the sand and wait for everything to be decided by itself. And also very often the mother wants to convince herself that it seemed to her, she heard it, or this is age.

2. And one more important point is that when pronouncing, staging, fixing the sound, it is very important to know some nuances and follow a certain sequence. This is necessary so as not to harm the child even more. Since if it is wrong to show the position of the organs of articulation, for example, the tongue, and the child fixes it, then it is much more difficult to correct this situation.

Attention check

Before parents get directly into the games, topics and exercises that are needed for the correct production of sound, it is necessary to assess the hearing. Therefore, it all starts with a qualitative test of the child's attention.

This can be done in several ways. Ideally, do them all. Not at once, of course, not in one day, but still try to do the exercises. The most important thing is to tune in to both parents and the child. It is important that the baby wants to play, so that he has a good mood. Once again, it is worth noting that it is absolutely not necessary to do everything at once and in one day.

The most important thing is that it is fun for the child and does not oppress the parents themselves.

Sounding toys should be placed near the child.

The essence of the exercise is that you need to close the child's eyes or ask him to turn away, in general, to do as he feels comfortable. And after thatit is necessary to take material for examining sound pronunciation, in this case it is a toy, and start to sound with it. Then the kid turns, examines all his treasures and shows the instrument that the adult played.

Of course, you should not take completely new toys for the game. The child should already know how the objects used sound. If this item is not completed, then first you need to play with the baby so that he learns and remembers how this or that toy sounds. In this case, it is necessary to pay the child's attention to each sound.

Toy location

In addition to the fact that the child must determine what object sounded, it is very important that he knows where the sound comes from. And here you can invite the baby to turn away, ringing the bell behind him from below, above, on the right, on the left, that is, in different positions. And he must point or say where he hears the sound from.

An important point in the method of examining sound pronunciation is closing the eyes of the child. Before doing this, you must always ask his permission. There are different options for reproducing this action, firstly, one of the adults can close his eyes with his own hands, and secondly, you can tie it with a small scarf. But in any case, the child should not be afraid and protest, and for this you first need to ask about his desires.

The important thought of this paragraph is that the sound pronunciation examination technique involves testing auditory understanding. If the child is not yet confident enough to perform these tasks, does not understand what is required of him, is mistaken, then adultsit is important not to check and forget once, but to conduct regular training.

What to look out for

When assessing auditory attention, parents should keep a protocol for examining sound pronunciation. This can be done in any notebook or notepad. This action is necessary not only to try to remember and forget over time, but to have accurate information about all errors in the perception of what was heard.

Perhaps the child incorrectly shows which instrument sounded, or did not recognize the direction of the bell. All this must be recorded in the protocol of the examination of sound pronunciation. Firstly, it will be easier for adults themselves, they will understand what to pay attention to. And secondly, if you need to contact specialists, the notebook will be a great help to correct the situation.

Sound pronunciation score

All work begins with a careful check of isolated articulation. In examining sound pronunciation in preschoolers, it is important to understand how the baby reproduces individual letters. And here it is desirable to present everything in the form of a game. For example, to test the letter C, you can ask the child to show how water flows or to make the sound of a pump that pumps up a ball. That is, if you require the baby to say something, then there is a big chance that he will refuse and will not say anything. And if you build a survey of the state of sound pronunciation as a game, then the child will be happy to participate.

Absolutely any articulation can be visualized, for example,depict with the kids that there is a pump in their hands and they need to pump up a deflated ball or tire. S-S-S-S-S-S. And so on.

For each sound, you can come up with your own associations: Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh - a snake, Sh-Sch-Sh-Sh - the frying pan hisses when mom fries cutlets. During cooking, you can invite the child to also turn into a brazier and sizzle. Z-Z-Z-Z - a mosquito or a bumblebee flies. And so, for each sound, an adult comes up with an association and plays with the child, while checking.

Exercises for examining sound pronunciation

When an adult checks the first point and hears how the child pronounces isolated letters, you can move on to syllables, words and phrases. And here it is also worth using some pictures or just asking to repeat after mom. But of course, with visual material, everything will be more effective.

It is necessary to conduct a survey of the sound pronunciation of preschool children in order to understand how a child reproduces complex combinations at the beginning, middle and end of a word, as well as at the junction of consonants and vowels. It is also worth paying attention not only to whether the baby is able to pronounce all the letters or not, but also to see how he does it.

After adults have checked the pronunciation of words, you can move on to phrases and various sentences. Colored pictures are also perfect here as visual material. But you can also play it in a different way. For example, put the doll in bed and ask what is she doing? Sonya is sleeping. If the child already agreesrepeat, then you can not complicate the check.

Tip: when parents are working with a baby, you need to pronounce the sound more stretched, that is, not a snowman, but a s-s-snowman.

How to evaluate the result

Again, it is very important to write down each step in a speech therapy album for examining sound pronunciation. And even more so, when parents check the speech or just play with the child and understand that the syllable and the word are poorly reproduced, this must be fixed. If a defect was found, that is, the baby has everything or something does not work out, then it is necessary to make an entry in the album to examine the sound pronunciation.

It happens that a child has no sound at all, for example, "uk" instead of "bow" or "eka" instead of "river", or the letter is replaced by a simpler one, for example, instead of "ball" he says "sarik". And if we are talking about the fact that the age of the child is up to 4-5 years, then in fact such a defect can be a simple age-related tongue-tied tongue, that is, a feature due to the fact that the baby is physiologically not yet able to pronounce the sound correctly. Here there is a high probability that the problem will be solved by itself when the child grows up a little and develops his articular muscles. It is worth remembering that each sound should become at a certain age, when the speech apparatus and hearing mature.

But still, ideally, parents should create favorable conditions in parallel. It is necessary to conduct games and various trainings for the development of hearing, articulation gymnastics and so on. This is necessary forso that the sound appears on time and there are no problems.

Sometimes it can happen that even when the mother plays various games, the child does not get the sound in the right place and you need to contact a specialist. But if adults have prepared a certain base, and the baby already knows many tasks for examining sound pronunciation, it will be easier for a speech therapist, since speech hearing is developed and the apparatus is strengthened.

The mistake of many is that parents wait for a certain age. This is wrong, as soon as the child begins to understand what they are told, learns to repeat after their parents, it is already possible to conduct educational games 1-2 times a week.

If such deviations are observed in a child after 4–5 years, then the delay indicates that there is some reason that prevents learning this or that sound. And this is already a true violation, and in difficult situations it can even be a neurological problem, when the connection between the organs of articulation and the central nervous system is broken. In such a situation, each training session should be carried out only under the guidance of a specialist.

Distorted pronunciation

Throat sounds P - this is when the baby vibrates not with the tip of the tongue, but with the sky, that is, the output is a more French manner, or when the child, when pronouncing hissing and whistling sounds, the tongue sticks out between the teeth - all this can no longer be called age tongue-tied tongues.

In this case, at 4-4, 5 years old, you need to contact a speech therapist, because already such defectsdo not correct themselves. Here you should not wait for the sound to become by itself. The longer you pull, the stronger this defect is fixed and then it becomes more difficult to correct the situation.

Knows how to pronounce correctly, but mixes sounds

If a child says, then a hat, then a hoe, or, depending on the position in the word, uses the wrong letters, then the reason may be precisely that it is difficult for him to distinguish the text by ear. It means that he does not catch the difference of some combinations, for him, for example, S-Z or R-L sound the same. And here, of course, it is very important to develop phonetic hearing, and in fact, this option should never be left to chance. As in principle, and the previous problems, but this defect is especially, because it can then result in problems with reading and writing. With such a violation, it is imperative to conduct an examination with specialists as early as possible in order to start correcting everything in a playful way. It would also be useful to visit a speech therapist.

Norms for the appearance of sounds

As mentioned in the article, letters are acquired gradually with age. It should be noted right away that these are conditional norms, in different cases it can be different. And you need to look individually, this is a feature of the child or the wrong pronunciation of the sound.

1. A, O, E, P, B, M.

In the first or second year of life, the child begins to pronounce some vowels and the simplest consonants, as they are as close as possible to sucking. It is easiest for a child to pronounce them. That is why, when he begins to babble, at about 5–7 months, justsuch a chain begins as pa-pa-pa, ma-ma-ma, ba-ba-ba. And so the first word is dad or mom or woman.

2. I, S, U, F, V, T, D, N, G, K, X, Y.

Further, by the age of three, other vowels and all consonants are pulled up, with the exception of the whistling C, Z and their soft pairs, as well as the sound Ts and all hissing.

3. S, W, C, W, H, SH.

It is from 3 to 5 years that such sounds begin to appear. But usually by the age of 4, the child begins to assimilate hissing and whistling.

4. R, L.

And only at 5-6 years old the most problematic letters should already sound clearly.

Main types of violations

The main and serious problems are:

1. Sound skipping (fish instead of fish). It happens that a certain sound, which is most difficult for a child, is simply swallowed. Most often this occurs with hissing, whistling or sonorous.
2. Sound distortion (French R). In this case, it may be that there is a letter, but at the same time it is incorrect.
3. Sound replacement (fish instead of fish). In this case, the baby puts those letters that are the most convenient and easy to pronounce for him.
4. Mixing the sound (wave has a red sarf). This is when adults are asked to pronounce a certain word, and the child says everything correctly. But when a letter is found elsewhere, errors appear.