help with hearing the difference between -ing and -ang

[hjffkj]

My nephew can not here the difference between words like sing and sang. He only hears sang. So when doing spelling if I say spell sang he does it but if I say spell sing he spells sang. I know he doesn't hear a difference because if I do both words back to back he gets confused and thinks I did t move to the next word. He does not have a hard time with song or sung though.

 

Any suggestions on how I can help him hear the difference?

[hjffkj]

I'll add that he can read the difference

[PeterPan]

Have him put his hand under his chin and feel the jaw drop.  The jaw will stay up with sing and drop for sang.

 

You can see this in the vowel circle.  

 

[hornblower]

I wonder what part of the world you're in. I think in some regions of the US, it's very hard to hear any difference. Instead of 'thing' sometimes what's said is 'thung'

My son had some similar problems & I found that I had to immerse him in British English. We actually have Brits in the family so that helps but also using audio books read by someone with a 'standard BBC' pronunciation helped.

also reciting silly sentences with the sounds: My friend Bing is bringing a ring to fling.

I sang and rang and he bit me with his fang.

Then try combining them. Also slowly saying bang, ing, bang, ing, bang, ing & then banging

Enunciate, enunciate, enunciate :)

[wendyroo]

Can he hear the difference between just /ing/ and /ang/ when they are not part of words?

 

If so, then I would segment the words just a bit when it was important for him to hear the difference like for spelling words or dictations.

For example:

"The word is sing. /s/ /ing/ sing."

 

Wendy

[Momling]

It could be a dialect thing - What area of the country is he from?

 

Speech perception is interesting... I'd probe the issue a bit -- Is it only before an ng? What about before other consonants?What about It/ate? Win/wane? Tim/tame? Pin/pain? What about pin/pen?

There is a well-known merger of short i and short e sounds before m, n and ng. Maybe that's what's going on? Regardless, It's notoriously difficult to teach people to recognize and pronounce sounds they can not distinguish. (Think - trying to teach a color blind person to distinguish two colors...)

[hjffkj]

It's not a dialect thing.  I am from northern Delaware which has a few odd pronunciations but nothing that would cause the confusion.  I talked to his mom about it and she pointed out to me that he can't say the difference either.  He is in speech therapy and it is a known issue.  Since he can't say it apparently when he says it to himself in his head he says it the way he would say it out loud and that is where the disconnect it.  

 

He can recognize the difference in words when he reads it but once he hears it verbally and tries to decode it his brain will only say the -ang sound because he's used to hearing himself say -ing words as -ang.  So I guess we'll just move on and in dictation when those words come up I will enunciate as best I can and remind him of the issue and help him until he's able to say the correct sounds himself. 

 

Thank you all for the input.

[merry gardens]

. He is in speech therapy and it is a known issue. Since he can't say it apparently when he says it to himself in his head he says it the way he would say it out loud and that is where the disconnect it.

 

He can recognize the difference in words when he reads it but once he hears it verbally and tries to decode it his brain will only say the -ang sound because he's used to hearing himself say -ing words as -ang. So I guess we'll just move on and in dictation when those words come up I will enunciate as best I can and remind him of the issue and help him until he's able to say the correct sounds himself.

 

Thank you all for the input.

Can he say the sounds correctly? If so, ask him to repeat the word before he spells it. Try the technique Oh E mentioned of putting his hand on his lower jaw to feel the difference. If it's still not coming, ask the speech therapist for help. But his ability to repeat the word correctly would be an important first step to spelling it right.

[kiwik]

If he can't say it i would shelve it until he can. He can do without it for now and I'm sure he will catch up when his speech is better. Just do spelling on words where he can hear and say the necessary info.

[PeterPan]

Jean DeGaetano has a helpful workbook Attention Good Listeners that improves auditory discrimination of vowels.  It's what helped my ds.  You can see some samples on the Great Ideas for Teaching website.  They'll have a page of pictures with pairs of words with minimal differences.  I'm reviewing the pages we did, and they *didn't* technically work on specifically distinguishing vowels.  It was while doing the worksheets though that my ds' ability to distinguish them at all came in.  Some of them are still crunchy (a/e/i/u, ok, that's a lot, lol), but we just drill them every day.  Barton 2 is going to spend a whole level helping them distinguish them and develop automaticity.  

 

He might also benefit from having LIPS.  LIPS is expensive, yes, but it's pretty unique for a child who is having trouble with their speech connection and isolating sounds and connecting it to written. That vowel circle I linked you to is from LIPS.  Whoever is tutoring him might find it helpful to get the LIPS materials.  If the dc fails the Barton pretest, LIPS is what Barton recommends.  

 

The trick with the is to use a mirror and slow down and really look at what's happening.  See that both involve retraction.  My ds and I call this "smilies".  Both will have retraction, making them in the same family, which is why they're confusing.  But if you can get the retraction for /E/ (written "ee") and feel it and see it, then hold that and begin to drop the jaw and go through the progression.  LIPS changes the actual progression, which irks me.  I teach it /E/, /i/, /A/, /e/, /a/, /u/.  If you get the retraction of /E/ (assuming he can say that), then go through the progression very slowly, with your hand under the jaw, feeling the drop.  It's a kinesthetic experience.  Use a mirror.  

 

If he's 7 and can't say /E/, then he has more serious issues and may need a different speech therapy.  PROMPT is sometimes necessary to bust through with apraxia (motor planning of speech issues).  I integrate the PROMPT physical inputs along with LIPS, which is why we got such amazing progress.  I don't think it's a *problem* to do this with a dc who doesn't have apraxia.  I just don't know if I could find you a video to let you see how.  It's an incredibly easy input to get the retraction for /E/.  Once you have that, the rest is going to happen very naturally.  You're going to say "show me Smilie" and do the retraction with /E/, then drop right on through them (E, i, A, e, a, u).  

 

So rather than waiting for him to get the sound, I'd change the speech therapy to get him the speech.  That's outrageous if a 7 yo can't say /E.  PROMPT can bust through that.  You would go to the PROMPT Institute website to find a PROMPT therapist.  If they suspect apraxia, PROMPT would be dramatically more effective.

[PeterPan]

Here.  

 

 

She's doing it super fast, but here is a clip of our SLP working with ds.  My videos are the first thing that pops up now when you google for PROMPT.  Fun.   :)  Start the video and you'll see her doing the warm-up.  The 2nd work is "like".  That /I/ sound is what my ds and I call in LIPS a "slider".  I forget what LIPS calls them.  I pick names that mean something to him.  So you'll see in the prompt for it (the muscle input) she's going to touch his jaw gently to get it to drop for the /a/ and then you'll see the retraction (thumb and pointer finger to the corners of his mouth) for the /E/ retraction.  So /I/ is /a/ + /E/ (technically /y/ but who's quibbling?).  So there you get to see the /y/ or /E/ retraction in action and the sensory input for it.  You're placing the thumb and pointer fingers at the corners of the mouth, just above the lips (not wider, above), hitting the muscles that do the retraction.  She makes it look more complicated because she's providing jaw support, neck support, and doing more for his hands.  I'm saying see the retraction and where she's touching.  It's super fast in the video, but it's there.

 

So that retraction is what you see for all the "smilie" vowel sounds: E, i, A, e, a, u.  The jaw drops but there's still a certain amount of retraction.  So you can work with him and harness this understanding, kinesthetic, visually.  If he were with someone with PROMPT training, they could actually get in there and motor plan it and help him feel them. 

 

The other trick to remember is that, as someone else explained, that "ng" is nasal and is pulling the vowels.  You're going to need to "think to spell" which means you're going to slow it down and say it the SPELLING way to get the SPELLING right.  Then go back and say it the normal way for speech.  Kids can understand this.  Practice doing it together.  "We SAY /sEng/ but we THINK TO SPELL /sing/."  Emphasize the short /i/.  When you discriminate /i/ (short I) and /a/ that hopefully is something he can hear.  If he can't, go back to them both being retracted but the /a/ having more of a jaw drop.  Slow it down and feel it.

 

You can find a SLP who can do LIPS.

 

Have you done the Barton pretest on him?  With his phonemic awareness issues, he may be dyslexic.  Our SLP was very slow on this and wanted to say it was normal, just the apraxia.  The psych diagnosed him as dyslexic in a hot minute.  Barton and LIPS are turning out to be great for us.  Barton slows things down to make sure they really DISTINGUISH vowels before they add more.  You might need this more powerful tool if you're tutoring him.  I wouldn't be paying $200-300 a level for Barton if I could have gotten something else to work.  I have a ton of other stuff, but Barton is pretty unique.  

[PeterPan]

http://www.bartonreading.com/students_long.html#screen  Here's the link for the Barton pretest.  (I used to always have trouble finding it, so I was helping you, hehe.)  I'd give it to him, and if he doesn't pass back up and follow her recommendations. You can also call and talk with Barton btw.  She's super awesome.