Articulation Boot Camp addresses common speech difficulties

There are some musicians who can’t hit the high notes. The late jazz trumpeter Miles Davis was an example. Though most of Davis’ playing was in the mid-range of his horn, his inability to consistently and accurately produce certain sounds was not a liability. Critics and historians often rank Davis among the geniuses of 20th century music.

Speakers with articulation impairment similarly have difficulties with certain sounds. The difficulty, however, is not related to pitch, but pronunciation.

Articulation impairment is a speech problem that involves mispronouncing a small set of consonant sounds, including “r,” “l,” “s” and “th.”

Instrumentalists may be able to work around their limitations, but the challenges and consequences of distorting the spoken word are much greater — and nearly unavoidable.

The “r” sound, for instance, occurs often in English, appearing in clusters or at the beginning, middle and ends of words, such as bread, red, hear, or mother.

In fact, every sentence in this story uses the “r” sound in one of those contexts. That frequency is not unusual or contrived for the purposes of illustration.

The “r” sound is among the most common in English; it’s also among the most commonly misarticulated, a combination that contributes to making some speech very difficult to understand, according to Susan Felsenfeld, a clinical associate professor in UB’s Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences and director of an intensive four-week summer program beginning early next month designed to help correct articulation impairment, one of the most common speech difficulties affecting children and adults.

This summer’s Articulation Boot Camp is currently screening applicants. There are separate groups for participants in grades 6-8 and 9-12. Both groups meet every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 1-2:30 p.m. beginning July 6 and ending July 30.

Space is extremely limited. Screening appointments are free and can be scheduled by calling the clinic at 716-829-5575. Program tuition is $300. Scholarships are available to eligible families unable to pay the full fee. Additional information is also online.

Up to 8 percent of children in the U.S. at some point during their school years will be diagnosed with articulation impairment. Yet, there is a curious lack of awareness about this common condition, which often is incorrectly seen as a nuisance more than a true disability.

Felsenfeld says early intervention is desirable and it’s important for parents and caregivers to understand that articulation impairment is not a problem that will necessarily go away on its own. Some children will self-correct, she says, but for others, the condition can continue into adulthood.

But the effects of articulation impairment can escape casual observation, especially since research shows no strong association between this particular speech problem and a child’s performance in school.

“It’s in the social realm that we begin to see its implications,” says Felsenfeld.

Children with articulation impairment often are teased or bullied.

Parents, meantime, frequently accept articulation impairment as the manner in which their child speaks or something that will resolve itself; but if uncorrected, articulation impairment can continue into adulthood and studies suggest potential employers rate persons with obvious sound-pronunciation problems as lower in maturity and competence than others with similar qualifications on paper.

The key to success at any age is working with a specialist who understands the disorder, and with proper treatment, achieving the goal of normalized speech is 100 percent attainable in most cases.

UB’s Articulation Boot Camp involves intensive positive practice to correct pronunciation errors. Much of the work involves repetition, in the same way a tennis player would work on a serve. These exercises often are embedded into entertaining activities. Rather than relying only on traditional methods of instruction, the boot camp incorporates novel feedback and instruction methods that may not have been tried before with that participant.

The instruction is highly individualized, with each participant assigned a personal clinician. All clinicians are UB graduate students in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences working under Felsenfeld’s direct supervision.

“It’s only a month, but it’s a month where group members will work on perfecting sounds in a way they wouldn’t get anywhere else,” Felsenfeld says.

The Articulation Boot Camp is among seven separate mini-camps offered this summer by the UB Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic. In addition to the summer programs, other individual programs are available to eligible participants during most of the year.

“Articulation impairment needs to be addressed, and doing so will make a difference in a child’s life,” says Felsenfeld.