Cleaning Up Vocalic /r/ Using Phonological Awareness Skills

If you are a Speech Language Pathologist working with children, then you have heard it! You've wrestled with it... You've dreaded it. It's the most "menacing" sound (thanks Dwight Schrute!) and we get to fix it! 

Over the past several years of eliciting the /r/ sound, I've come up with several tips and tricks to clean up that muddy vocalic /r/ sound. I have heard so many "fers" for "fours," "hers" for "hairs," and "berds" for "boreds"! I have finally figured out a way to help reinforce the /r/ production, improve articulation of the vowel, and speed up the transition in between. This specific strategy uses the child's phonological awareness skills to ensure that he or she is producing all the needed phonemes in the target word. If the child has weak phonological awareness skills, then this strategy can also be used to teach and/or improve those skills. Here are 4 steps I take to increase intelligibility of a variety of vocalic /r/ types:

1. Establish a strong vocalic /er/. This may not happen over night... and it might take months. However, once I establish a strong vocalic /er/ that the child can quickly produce in words, I know I have a strong foundation needed to tackle the other vocalic /r/ types. 

2. Complete a vocalic /r/ probe. It's important to know which vocalic /r/ types the child can produce without extra prompting. I like to use the Entire World of R Advanced Screening but you could also whip something informal yourself. Make sure to include /or/, /ar/, /ire/, /ear/, and /air/. After completing the screening, you have your targets- voila! If the child is unable to produce the vocalic /r/ type with 80% or better- I would use this strategy to improve their accuracy. 

3. Practice phoneme deletion for each vocalic /r/ type. Pick one of your vocalic /r/ targets and prompt the child to omit the /er/ sound from the word. You can practice initial, medial, and final positions one at a time or mix them up depending on the skill level of the child:

- Say hear. Now say hear without /er/--- "he"

- Say ear. Now say ear without /er/--- "ee"

- Say beard. Now say beard without /er/ --- "bead"

You get the gist. Keep going until they understand the task and are performing fairly independently. At this point... you may point out to the child the discrepancy between their vowel sounds. The student may say something close to "her" instead of "hear" but are able to say "he" perfectly. Ask them if the vowel sounds are the same or different. This helps promote self-correction skills later on down the road during the carryover process. 

4. Put the /er/ sound back! This step is where I start hearing clearer productions. Prompt the child to put back the /er/ sound into each word right after omitting it:

- Say hear. Now say hear without /er/--- "he"
  Now say he with /er/ at the end --- "he-er"
  Say it smoothly --- "hear"

- Say ear. Now say ear without /er/ --- "ee"
  Now say ee with /er/ at the end --- "ee-er"

  Sat it smoothly --- "ear"

- Say beard. Now say beard without /er/ --- "bead"

  Now say "bead" with /er/ in the middle --- "bee-er-d"
  Say it smoothly --- "beard"

They may have to practice saying it smoothly multiple times.. getting faster each time so they improve their coordination of the task and the production sounds more natural. 

I typically write the phonemes on a piece of paper or a whiteboard and tap each sound at first, then slide my finger under the phonemes as the child says the phonemes all together. This way they see the written cue of the sounds in the word and receive visual/gestural support to prompt them to articulate each phoneme clearly and naturally. 

What I love about this strategy is that depending of the skill level of the child, it helps them increase independence with their productions of vocalic /r/ and rely less on verbal prompts and models! It can assist with carryover outside of therapy because as they read, the written text acts as a natural prompt to the child, reminding them to correctly produce both the the vowel and /r/ sound.

I hope this strategy is helpful to you and your caseload! Good luck and happy SLP-ing!