Any tricks for saying the 2nd sound of "oo" (Spalding, et al)?

[boscopup]

I was just going over Spalding phonograms with my kids, and I discovered that my 6.5 year old cannot say the 2nd sound of "oo" (it's the sound used in "foot", "put", etc.). I demonstrated and demonstrated, and he just could not say it. I don't know how to explain a different way? He ends up making it more of an /i/ sound, and I had him try saying "foot" and "put", and he said something closer to "fit" and "pit". I never noticed this before! He said speech therapy never worked on that sound either. We aren't in speech therapy this year, as the county decided to stop allowing homeschoolers speech services. :tongue_smilie: (quick history: ear infections early on, didn't talk until closer to age 3, has good use of vocabulary now, but still sounds "weird" when speaking, and we've mostly been correcting individual sounds as they pop up... did speech therapy through public school for 2 years)

 

I had him watch my lips as I said the 1st and 2nd sounds of "oo" in order, so he could see that my lips didn't really move much. I could see his lips clearly changing to an /i/ sound, and I showed him the difference. He still couldn't do it.

 

So are there any tricks?

 

I'm glad I decided to teach the Spalding phonograms! I'd never noticed this issue before, and apparently the SLP hadn't either.

[boscopup]

Answering my own question (or talking to myself :lol:)... I had him say "book", which he says correctly. So I told him it's the same sound as in "book". I was able to get him to say "foot" and "put" correctly, after a few tries. And then we worked on the two sounds of "oo". He still wants to say /i/, but I did get a correct 2nd sound out of him.

 

With the ear infections those first two years of life, he learned some sounds wrong, so most of his speech therapy has just been correcting individual words. These words apparently got overlooked!

[MerryAtHope]

Great job getting him to connect with the sound! I like Rachel's English, if you have trouble with any other sounds. She has short videos for most sounds, aimed at adult ESL learners, but I find it can be a helpful tool for me to watch to pick up teaching clues (what to watch or feel for in the mouth etc...) 

 

Merry  :-)

[Forgiven]

I feel for you! My 8-year-old DS had constant ear infections as a child, and it wasn't until a month before his 3rd birthday that we realized he couldn't hear. A hearing test showed that he was hearing some sounds, but couldn't make anything out--which is why he always dropped the beginning and ending consonants in words. His speach is still not great. Our state wouldn't cover speach therapy because he was too close to the cut-off age of 3. Ugh! I'm glad you were able to get some therapy in, but too bad they stopped providing it. :(

 

People think I'm nuts when I tell them that my DS's lack of hearing for the first three years of his life still has an effect on him. They don't see it. But when I point out his odd speach patterns, then they realize and say, "Oh, that's why he sounds like that?"

 

I'm so glad you were able to get your DS to recognize the 'OO' sound in book. Great job!

[boscopup]

Thank you, Merry! I've bookmarked that site. :D

 

Angie, yes, we realized that DS didn't have but a few words at 2 years old, took him to an ENT, and they found a bunch of fluid in his ears (previous ear infection had been 6 months prior, so this fluid wasn't going anywhere). We did tubes, and his speech improved greatly from there. He finally started really talking at 3 (phrases, sentences, etc.). Now he talks all the time, but still sounds a little odd. Sometimes it's grammar usage (which we correct gently a little bit at a time... working on "was/were" right now), and sometimes it's pronunciation. When he started speech therapy at 4.5, he would say "nolk" for "milk", "nail" for "mail", etc. Yet he could say "mama" just fine! So it wasn't that he couldn't say the /m/ sound. He just didn't know which words were supposed to use it. The ENT described his fluid issue by telling us to imagine going to Mexico with cotton stuffed in your ears and trying to learn Spanish via immersion. That's how DS was learning English. So I do try to keep in mind that he hasn't been hearing English correctly as long as he should have been. I've been doing a lot of read-alouds with higher language, and that has helped quite a bit in the past year. I'm seeing better grammar and more extensive vocabulary. Now I just have to isolate the oddities and fix those. :) Sometimes it's hard to notice the oddities. Like you realize it's odd, but don't know why. Sometimes it's word order. He used to have question word order all messed up, so your brain had to reword the question to figure out what he was asking. So I try to notice those little word order or grammar usage issues that make it hard to understand him, and correct them one at a time.

[kwg]

When I taught, the first sound was hooting owl and the second was the sound you make when lifting something heavy.  lol.  

[Desert Strawberry]

Have him watch your lips. Show him that they make a little O.

My son's speech therapist had me do this. Now most of the time when I say "Look at my lips "he corrects himself immediately, without even looking.

[Desert Strawberry]

Dp

[boscopup]

When I taught, the first sound was hooting owl and the second was the sound you make when lifting something heavy.  lol.  

 

I did this today, and it definitely helped! Thank you! :lol:

 

Now that he CAN say it, those words should correct quickly. This is the reason why his speech sounds so weird sometimes. It's the little pronunciation things that are not consistent across every word (ie, he's capable of saying the sound in some words), and it's just barely different enough that your brain notices something is wrong but can't quite put a finger on what it is. So yay for phonics in helping me figure it out! :hurray: