Using phonological approaches to treat phonological deficits

Sometimes, kids might understand sounds correctly in their heads, but when they try to say them out loud, it doesn't come out right. It can be hard to know if they're making a mistake or if there's something deeper going on.

Kids who struggle with speech sounds may also find it tough to work with sounds when they're reading. So, it's important to figure out if the problem is just with saying the sounds or if there's a bigger issue with understanding them.

Roepke (2024) made a helpful tutorial to help SLPs assess children with phonological disorders. She discusses implementing several tasks to administer when assessing these kids in the following areas:

1. Phonological Awareness:

• What it means: Understanding and playing with sounds in words.

• Example Tasks: Mixing sounds together, breaking them apart, removing parts, finding words that sound the same.

• What to think about for kids with speech sound problems: Use activities where they don't have to speak, choose words with sounds they can say, and be careful with words that have tricky sound combinations.

2. Phonological Memory:

• What it means: Remembering sounds and repeating them.

• Example Task: Saying made-up words.

• What to think about for kids with speech sound problems: Use made-up words based on the sounds they can say, and consider if the problem is in moving their mouth or if it's more about understanding the sounds.

3. Phonological Retrieval:

• What it means: Recalling sounds quickly.

• Example Task: Saying the names of letters.

• What to think about for kids with speech sound problems: Skip letters they struggle with and give them extra time to say the names right.

Some extra tips:

• Don't always avoid testing words that have sounds the child struggles with. It can help us understand what they know.

• These tips can also work for kids who speak more than one language, as long as the sounds are similar in all the languages.

Roepke pointed out that we don’t always need to avoid testing words that use phonological forms the child doesn’t understand/can’t product yet. This can help us know where breakdowns are occurring and give us a plan on how to treat it.

Also, many of these assessment strategies could be used with multilingual children using phonemes that are present across all of the languages spoken by the child. 

If you want to learn more, there's a full tutorial available, but you might need to be a member of ASHA SIG. It has lots of useful information for speech therapists, but also for teachers working on reading with kids who have speech sound challenges. Feel free to share it with them!

Sources:

Watson, Liz. Phonological problems, phonological solutions. (Jan 2024). The Informed SLP.

Roepke, E. (2023). Assessing phonological processing in children with speech sound disorders. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_PERSP-23-00036 [available to ASHA SIG members]