 Fluency
When a person speaks fluently their speech flows easily. When a person is dysfluent, their speech is uneven and does not flow smoothly.
Everyone is dysfluent some of the time. No one is fluent all of the time.
Speech behaviors that are considered dysfluent include:
1. Repetitions - repeating individual sounds, syllables, words, or phrases
2. Interjections - extra sounds, syllables, or words that add no meaning ot the message (uh, ahm, well, like, you know)
3. Pauses - pause within a phrase or thought that lasts over 2 seconds
4. Revisions - stopping the flow of thought midstream and starting over in a new direction (The baby - The hungry baby ate the soup.)
5. Mistiming - sounds or syllables may be prolonged (The baby ate the s-s-soup.)
The greater the frequency of mistimed words (six to ten instances per 100 words spoken having dysfluencies lasting longer than 2 seconds in duration), the more the dysfluent speech is viewed as stuttering.
Fluency Strategies for Home:
1. Make talking enjoyable. Keep it easy and fun.
2. Give your child enough time to speak.
3. Avoid interrupting
4. Pause briefly before responding to your child.
5. Take time to talk with your child alone. Use language at your child’s level so your child can understand.
6. Avoid criticisms or corrections of your child’s speech.
7. Increase time in situations in which your child tends to be fluent.
Fluency Activities:
* Have child recite familiar lists such as names of family members, days of the week, months of the year, numbers.
* Have child recite familiar songs, poems, and rhymes.
* Provide child with lots of oral reading opportunities.
* Have child “Draw and Talk” (talk about his picture as he is drawing it).
* Have child “Write and Talk” (say the words as you write them: lists, sentences, or stories).
* Have child talk about what he sees in a picture or magazine.
* Choral read.
* Sometimes it helps to echo the child's speech (ex: I went to the ballgame…”You went to the ballgame, etc.)
* Have child talk or read to a younger child or family pet.
* Take parts in a play.
* Orally re-read short stories and poems.
* Child echo your speech.
* Talk about what you see in a picture
* Rhyming activities
* Recite lists
Sources:
Gorham Speech-Language Therapists
Flex Study Group 2001-2002
Portland Public Schools' Speech-Language Therapists
Communication Skill Builders 1988
H. Luper, R. Mulder 1964
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