Henry
Chapter two: Advanced level
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Task one: Initial ideas
Task one: Initial ideas
Watch the three video clips of the interview with Henry again. Write down your initial thoughts about Henry’s communication in the interview.
Response sheet - Henry (PDF, 131KB)
How would you describe Henry’s profile of speech, language and communication difficulties to a family member or a colleague in education?
Clip one
Clip one
Henry talking about what he enjoys doing at college.
Clip two
Clip two
Henry talking about working in a forge.
Clip three
Clip three
Henry talking about his own talking and communication.
Task one feedback
You may have included the following:
Henry participates well in the interview and is able to effectively take part in a conversation.
Henry is able to convey the meaning or the message of what he wants to say. He can describe and explain well.
Henry is able to put words into sentences and to link these sentences together.
Henry has effective non-verbal skills. He uses gesture and other non-verbal communication such as eye contact, facial expression to aid his verbal communication.
Henry’s speech can be difficult to understand. Although he uses words and sentences to communicate, the sounds in these words are not always clear or intelligible.
Henry’s speech can sound effortful and perhaps slower than other people.
Henry seems comfortable talking in a one-to-one interaction. However, he is aware of his speech and the aspects of his talking he finds difficult, and the responses of others to him.
Task two: Describing speech sounds and speech difficulties
Task two: Describing speech sounds and speech difficulties
Watch each video clip again carefully. Observe and reflect on Henry’s speech, particularly how he says sounds in the words.
Listen out for these words and think about the following:
In clip one, how does Henry say the words “spoon forging”, “gardening” and “greenwood work”?
In clip two, how does Henry say the phrase “wipe all the mud off”?
In clip three, how does Henry say “words”, “slow” and “repeat”?
It is very difficult to hear sounds in words when people are talking and even more so on audio and video recordings. Studying speech is very complex requiring specific knowledge and skills in linguistics, particularly phonetic analysis and transcription.
There is a wealth of knowledge and research literature into how children learn speech sounds and the speech difficulties some children and young people have. For Henry, we are thinking about his speech difficulties starting in childhood and not resolving over time. This means that he still has speech difficulties as a teenager. Speech generally refers to the actual sounds a person can say when they are talking.
Different languages use different speech sounds so the speech sounds in a language such as Urdu or Punjabi are very different to those we use in English. Languages will share speech sounds so some of the sounds in the French language are the same as those in English but some are different.
Importantly, children usually only learn the speech sounds of the language or languages they are learning in their environment. Children usually learn the speech sounds of the language(s) they are learning in a similar sequence and at a similar rate.
If you are interested, the sequence and rate of the development of speech sounds in the English language are shown in the Resources section of Chapter four: Supporting materials.
This activity is designed to help you start listening to speech sounds and how speech sounds can be described and how they can be different to those we would normally expect someone to say in these words. The aim is not an accurate transcription of the words or sounds.
Task two feedback
In the words in the three clips you have been looking at, you may have noticed that Henry has difficulties with these sounds:
In clip one
Spoon forging - Henry seems to say the first ‘s’ sound in spoon and the first ‘f’ sound in forging but the other sounds in the words are less clear.
Gardening - Henry doesn’t seem to say the ‘g’ sound at the start of the gardening or the ‘n’ sound in the middle of the word.
In clip two
Metal - Henry doesn’t seem to say the ‘t’ sound in the middle of the word.
In clip three
Words - Henry seems to say the ‘w’ sound at the start of the word but the sounds in the rest of the word are less clear.
Slow - Henry doesn’t seem to say the ‘l’ sound after the ‘s’ sound.
Again - Henry doesn’t say a clear ‘g’ sound. This sounds more like a ‘d’ sound.
You may disagree with some of the observations above. This is not a problem, although it is worth thinking why this may be. One issue, is that you know the words you are listening out for and so this makes the listener pre-empt the sounds he is going to hear and so the listener may perceive they have heard the sound when the speaker did not say them.
Perhaps think about if the task would have been easier or harder if you had not known the words you were listening for beforehand. Another issue is that watching Henry say the words may be easier than if you listened to him without seeing him on the screen.
Watching a speaker gives the listener lots of information about the words they are saying. Finally, everyone speaks and hears differently and there is much variation in how a group of people will say the same word and also how a group of listeners will perceive a word.
Earlier, we talked about how children usually only learn the speech sounds of the language or languages they are learning in their environment. Children usually learn the speech sounds of the language(s) they are learning in a similar sequence and at a similar rate.
By four years of age, children are usually considered to be speaking clearly or intelligible. Children may still have some unclear sounds and some sounds such as the ‘y’ sound in ‘yellow’ and the ‘r’ sound in ‘red’ may not be fully clear till seven years of age. This is all within considered typical development.
A broad distinction is made between speech difficulties where articulation is affected and speech difficulties where phonology is affected, and of course speech difficulties where articulation and phonology are both involved
Articulation
Generally refers to the articulators, the muscles used for speech, and the anatomy of the speech structures involved in speech. These can be affected by neurological damage, such as cerebral palsy; structural impairment, such as a cleft lip and palate; and more subtle neurological involvement, such as dyspraxia or childhood apraxia of speech, where the child finds it difficult to send the messages to the muscles and to coordinate these to make accurate speech sounds.
Phonology
Phonology is more complex to understand and here, knowledge of the typical development of speech sounds is helpful (see the resource mentioned above). There are many developmental checklists that detail the approximate ages at which children learn the sounds of the language(s) they are learning.
In English, sounds including ‘m’ and ‘b’ are reported to come first with ‘d, p, t, k’ coming later and subsequent sounds after that. This can be interpreted as the easier sounds to articulate coming before harder sounds such as ‘f’, ‘ch’ and ‘j’. These developmental checklists are all approximate and imply that children learn sounds in isolation and in an order. However, this is not necessarily always accurate. It is therefore important to think about the context of children’s speech and variation in typical development.
Phonology can be helpful here and is used to try and understand these children’s speech. In a very general sense, these children are considered to have immature phonological or speech sound development. For example, they may not have learnt the speech sound ‘p’ or they may be trying to say a ‘k’ sound but produce it as a ‘t’ sound.
The theory here is that these children have not learnt what is needed to produce the ‘k’ sound accurately, ie it is a sound made at the back of the mouth and involves the back of the tongue lifting up to the top of the mouth (palate) to momentarily block the air supply to then produce a ‘k’ sound.
With support, these children are expected to learn how to make the speech sounds they have not yet learnt or are producing incorrectly. The distinction between articulation and phonology is not always clear and many children will present with a more complex profile of articulation and phonology difficulties that impact on their speech development.
Regardless of whether speech difficulties are articulation or phonology based or both, children who have still have unclear speech at the age of five years are likely to continue with these difficulties into later childhood and adult life.
Task three: Reflecting on the associations between speech difficulties and literacy difficulties
Task three: Reflecting on the associations between speech difficulties and literacy difficulties
We will find out more about what speech sounds are, and why they are important to literacy.
The statements below are helpful in thinking about the links between speech development and literacy development, particularly in young children starting out on their journey learning to read and write:
Speech sounds are the building blocks we use to make the words we say.
In the English language, there are only 26 letters of the alphabet but there are 44 actual speech sounds (20 vowels and 20 consonants) that we put together in different ways to make all our words.
When thinking about children’s speech sound development, it is therefore important not to be too heavily influenced by our knowledge of spelling. The examples given in the task below illustrate the point that the number of letters in a word does not necessarily correspond with the number of speech sounds in the same word.
Task
Task
In the words below, identify the number of letters and the number of speech sounds.
Do the words have the same number of letters and speech sounds?
The words are: ship, keys, sugar and xylophone.
Task three feedback
Ship sh..i..p (4 letters but 3 sounds)
Keys k..ey..s (4 letters but 3 sounds)
Sugar s..u..g..ar (5 letters but 4 sounds)
Xylophone x..y..l..o..ph..o..ne (9 letters but 7 sounds)
In this task, we can see that in the English language, speech sounds do not map neatly onto letters. Children learning to read and write have many rules to learn about if and how speech sounds can be written down as letters to make words. This makes literacy a complex task for all children. For children who have unclear speech this can be more complex and difficult.
As a child, Henry would have had a severe speech sound difficulty making it hard for him to match his unclear speech sounds to the corresponding letter or letters. This may have made learning to read challenging for him.
Research shows that some children with speech difficulties find it harder to learn to read and write than children without speech difficulties. For those children with both speech and language difficulties, this is often even harder.
Task four: Supporting teenagers who have speech difficulties
Task four: Supporting teenagers who have speech difficulties
Watch clip three below and consider the following:
How does Henry describe his speech? Is this the same or different to how we have been thinking about speech?
How aware do you think Henry is about his speech?
How do you think Henry feels about his speech?
How does Henry describe how he tries to make others understand his speech?
How does Henry describe how others help him with his speech?
Clip three
Clip three
Henry talking about his own talking and communication.
Task four feedback
Henry talks about how his speech varies. Sometimes, it is “ok” and at other times it is “not ok”. This implies that he cannot always be in control of his talking and how effective his communication with others can be. Henry does not talk about speech, articulation or phonology.
At this individual level of experience, Henry talks about knowing what he is saying but others not understanding him. He talks about how long words are “not ok” but short words are “ok”.
It is interesting how he refers to these long words as more difficult than short words. It would be interesting to find out if it is the length of the words that are difficult or the complexity of the words, ie they may be short words but include sounds that are more difficult to say.
Henry is able to talk about his speech not always being “ok” and “hard” so from these we can assume that he is aware of his speech and that others don’t always understand him. He reports finding this “annoying”. He describes “knowing the words I mean” but other people not knowing what he is saying.
Henry explains how he can slow his speech down to help people understand him. Perhaps surprisingly, he is accepting of people asking him to repeat himself and to say it “over and over” until they do understand. This is interesting as many people would probably be uncomfortable asking someone to repeat themselves lots of times.
Summary task: Reflections
Summary task: Reflections
Summarise your thoughts on Henry’s speech, language and communication skills.
What have you learned from watching this?
How will your learning impact on your own professional practice?
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