• Question: Hi, i read that you study speech and wanted to know: My cousin is almost 4 and still doesn't talk in properly formed sectences or a conversation. He is not shy and knows words put finds the pronunciation hard. A doctor has told his parents that he has a high pallet. What could he (or i!) do to help his pronunciation improve? Thanks, georgie98

    Asked by georgie98 to Tim on 14 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Tim Fosker

      Tim Fosker answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi @georgie98

      It is great that you are interested in helping your cousin and thinking about things like this is definitely a way to put science to good use.

      High-arched palate (sometimes called a high palate) can cause difficulties with ‘articulation’ (the ability to say words using our mouth, lips and tongue). Saying words with sounds in them where your tongue needs to touch the roof of your mouth (palate) can be very hard. Normally a scan of the side of the head similar to an x-ray that shows the structures inside will be used to check whether the high-arched palate is a cause of the speech difficulties or not.

      One of the key things you can do with your cousin is to encourage them to speak to you and let them feel comfortable trying to talk to you, even if they can’t pronoun the words properly. Your cousin’s doctor will probably refer your cousin to a speech and language therapist. They will be able to find out what sounds you cousin is having difficulty with and help them learn to make those sounds. The speech and language therapist will probably give your cousin’s parents ‘speech games’ to play with your cousin and you can help by playing those with your cousin too.

      I hope I’ve answered your question.

Comments

  • Photo: georgie98

    georgie98 commented on :

    Thanks for answering my question.
    This makes sense, but i think his parents are reluctant to admit that my cousin has trouble pronuncing. Is there anything else i could do on my own?
    Thanks for the information, it is very helpful 🙂

    • Photo: Tim

      Tim commented on :

      I’m afraid it is really hard to know how to advise you without assessing your cousin’s speech. However, with your determination I see no reason why you can’t make a small assessment yourself. You will have to do some background reading on the internet and maybe look-up some books in your local library.
      Here is a bit of background to start you off. As I’m sure you know there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, but you may not have known that there are 44 different speech sounds that we call phonemes in English. You should be able to look up examples of all of these phonemes on the internet that you can listen to.
      Now for two things you can do:
      (1) Armed with you new knowledge of the speech sounds of English you can find out which sounds your cousin can make and which he can’t. If he has trouble with certain sounds you can try and explain to him the shape of your lips, tongue and mouth when you make that sound. This is very hard as it means you need to study the way you make each of these sounds, but the internet will help here too.
      (2) You say your cousin is struggling with combining words. To help with this you can ask your cousin to copy short sentences you say. Start with one or two words then 3, 4, 5 and so on. Try to get your cousin to swap words in the sentence. Use real life objects if you can. For example
      “my truck”
      “[a red] truck”
      “[this is] a red truck”
      “can you see my truck?”
      “can you see my [green] truck?”
      “can you see my [bike]?”
      “can you [hold] my truck”?

      If you find you understand all of this and get even more interested in how children learn to speak and understand language then I really hope you become a scientists because science could do with people with your motivation : -)