D is a very well-behaved 6-year-old who has several articulation problems. He has been receiving services at the WVU speech clinic since February 2006. He also goes to speech therapy in the schools. In the past, clinicians have worked on articulations of consonant clusters such as /gl, pl, kl, bl, and fl/.

D can make the voiceless “th” sound, but he substitutes /f/ in most cases. I decided to take a minimal pairs approach. I had flashcards of several examples, such as thread vs. Fred and free vs. three. I explained to D that if he says “free” when he means “three,” that people may be confused about what he is saying. Three and free have different meanings, and he has to use the “th” sound so that people will be able to understand him. We just learned about using the minimal pairs technique in one of our classes, and that is where I first got the idea to use it. I found a case study of two children having the same problem as D. In the study, the children corrected the substitution in targeted words, but did not generalize to words not used in therapy (Saben and Ingham, 1991).

D seemed to understand the concept that he needs to use “th” to be an accurate speaker of the language. When he is doing therapy activities, he concentrates on his speech and is over 90% accurate. However, when he is taking a small break, he reverts back to using the substitution. Hopefully he will begin to generalize soon!

References:

Saben, Cari B. and Ingham, Janis Costello (1991). The effects of minimal pairs treatment on the speech-sound production of two children with phonologic disorders. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 1023-1040.