ENT Laser – A Decade of Excellence
- For the last ten years, our speech therapists has provide fluency training to numerous speakers in Cantonese, English, and Mandarin.
- Since 2005, our speech therapists have provided fluency training to students in a number of mainstream primary and secondary schools, through school-based speech therapy services.
Introduction
Developmental Dyslexia consists of two types of difficulties: dyslexia and dysgraphia.
- Initiation problem: difficult to start an utterance, but tend to speak too fast once initiated.
- Inappropriate repetition: repetition of syllables, words or phrases, e.g. "I go…go…go…go to school".
- Inappropriate prolongation: prolongation of syllables during speech, e.g. "I go to ssssschool". (prolongation of "s" sound for over 2 seconds)
- Inappropriate blockage: inappropriate pauses in an utterance, e.g. "I go … (pause for over 2 seconds)… to school".
- Avoidance behavior: such as frowning, eye-blinking, head jerks, mouth opening, tongue protruding out. They are physical movements related to attempts to terminate a moment of stuttering.
Although normal speakers would have the above dysfluencies from time to time, but stuttering dysfluencies may last longer, occur more frequently, and are produced with more effort and strain.
Assessment
Speech therapist will conduct a 45-minute assessment with individual client. Through face-to-face interview and discussion, speech therapist will attempt to summarize the problems and analysis the contributing factors for client's problems. Clients will also need to fill in a questionnaire to self-evaluate their problems and the effect on daily living.
Treatment
Speech therapist will design treatment according to the needs of individual client. The commonly used treatment methods include: Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) Program, Tapping, masking.
Besides, speech therapist will recommend required adaptation strategies for each client to increase speech fluency in daily living, such as:
- Continuous phonation
- Control speech rate
- Soft onset of phonation
- Soft articulation
