mango wrote:I am looking for ways to improve my son's pronunciation.
He can't speak clearly, for example he will say 'a' for ask, 'mas' for 'must'. When he is speaking mandarin, he will pronounce 'gui' as 'dui' etc.
He only started to speak at the age of 3 and all along his pronunciation had been way off. His teacher did mention that they have difficulties understanding him when he first joined the kindergarten but they got used to his way of speaking after some time.
We tot that the problem will resolve by itself as he grows older but he is going to P1 next year and there is no sign of improvement.
any advice?
ChiefKiasu wrote:
I recall vaguely that buds has encountered similar cases before in her teaching career. Perhaps you can wait until our night owl wakes from her slumber to do a bit of diagnostics for you. Regardless, you might want to consider sending your son to a professional speech therapist to do proper evaluation and prognosis. I agree it is worrying if his condition extends beyond the age of 6.
Wuaah, your memory not bad, Chief.
Mango, from your observation that this has
been going on since child is 3 years old up
to now coming 6 years old is kinda a long
wait for resolve-by-itself time-frame...
Hope you will be able to help your child fix
it soonest possible!
I've had a few experiences with children
with this problem. For a handful of them, we
managed to detect the early deficiency from
sounds activity and realized the child actually
is unable to hear sounds very clearly. To the
child, the sounds sounded more muffled-like,
and maybe could hear only the initial sounds
uttered by someone or something..
Another problem could be the inborn length of
tongue. Short tongued kiddies may not be able
to pronounce some sounds clearly... Even if they
do, it takes up a helluva effort and at times they
can even speak with spitting-saliva moments just
to consciously correct the way they speak to match
the normal kid's way of speech and pronunciation...
If your child is exposed to phonetic sounds during
the kindy years, try asking him/her to sound out
the individual letter sounds. Observe how that goes..
Ask your child to listen for loud and soft sounds.
Easily done with an empty bottle filled with beans
or seeds and rice... Make two of each and get child
to match the two SAME sound bottles.
If the chances are that child is not hearing properly,
(in your initial home observation) you can choose to
visit the ear, nose, throat specialise ie. ENT specialist.
In some of my students' cases a minor day op was in
need and the use of a hearing aid until hearing ability
improves.
Children who may have difficulty hearing well, may
speak with hollow post-nasal sounds in their noses
and throats... like when you pinch your nose and
try to speak kinda sound...
And yes, if you think it's speech therapy that you
need cos you think the primary issue is really the
way the child speaks then go through referral for
better savings.
Speech therapy may not work for all kiddies tho..
And i've encountered parents who find that the
therapy sessions carry on for a tad too long
without much improvements...