Working on Accurate Movement Gestures

Full transcript

Hi, it's Nicole from the NYU Motor Speech Lab. This week, we're talking about accurate movement gestures. Somebody emailed and asked what that looks like in therapy: how do you work on movement gestures in treatment? It's such a good question. If I could show you clips of me with the kids I'm working with, I would, but because we're grant-funded, there's confidentiality to consider.

So let's talk about the word we're featuring this week on our Instagram: "my." One of the major points we wanted to bring up is that we don't parse out the phoneme. We're not going to teach "m" and then "y." We work on the word in its totality. So how do we make the word easier and work on smooth transitions? We slow the word down.

What might I be doing in therapy with a kid for whom "my" is a hard word? I've had a couple of kids, one in particular, where "my" became "ya." So what did I do? I said, "Okay, we're going to say the word together. Meet me here." I prompted them to bring their lips together, held that position with them for an uncomfortably long time, and talked about it: "Do you feel what it feels like when your lips come together at the beginning of this word?" Then I went into the vowel. I did a nice gesture with my hand and elongated the vowel: "My. Say it with me. My." And we worked on that together in simultaneous production.

If that's hard, one thing you can do is take the voicing off. Then, once they start getting better at it, you bring it back to a regular rate: "My." I hope that's helpful.