Improve your Speech In 3 days

Can you improve your speech in 3 days? The answer is yes and no both! Let’s delve deeper into the article to segment various aspects of speech and how you can improve them.

The overall progress of speech depends directly on the nature, type and severity of the speech impediment.

What are speech skills?

Speech is a verbal expression of thoughts, ideas. For children, speech develops over time and follows various stages. It is a part of a larger umbrella called language development. For adults, speech skills are used for effective communication at work place and at home. Everyone is dependent of speaking. Hence adorning awesome speech skills is important.

What are the reasons for speech difficulties?

There are many reasons for speech delay as mentioned below

• Articulation Disorder

  In this, the child will have difficulty in combining sounds to form words and sentences. Their speech will also be unclear and  there can be problems in their structures like tongue tie, high arched palate etc., hearing loss, developmental delays ,cerebral palsy and so on.

  Adults with articulation disorder may be struggling with a lisp or neurological deficits which cause slurring of speech.

• Fluency Disorders

  They can have stuttering, in which they will keep repeating the same sound and word again and again or the words will not come out. The other type is cluttering, in which they speak very fast and hence, sounds or words will be omitted.

• Language Deficits

  A child will show speech delayed in understanding and expressing ideas as compared to their peer groups. The child will have difficulty understanding spoken language, commands, and concepts. In expressing concepts, the child will show difficulty in speaking sentences, hence they will lag behind.

  An adult with a history of stroke, dementia, parkinson’s disease or other neurological deficit can have poor language abilities. Depending on the site of lesion in the brain, the symptoms of the speech disorder can vary.

• Accent

  Accent is way of speaking language. Different people have different accent like some regions or country have their own accent. So ,we can know about where a person is from by listening to their accent. In some cases, it will be difficult to understand what other person is saying.

  In India, due to the influence of native language and culture, many of us have an accent when we speak English. We might not understand the accent so we ask them to repeat, which will be difficult for them. So, a Speech Therapist can help by saying how different sounds are being pronounced, how to put stress on each word and to control the intonation of speech ,thereby helping the person to speak more clearly.

How is the Assessment Done?

Once you feel there is difficulty in speech, we need to evaluate the reason for the same and the severity. A speech therapist will assess the child using informal assessment and formal assessment. They observe the child with the test material and track the speech and language skills of the child. They will also assess the severity of the problems. Then, further guidance will be given.

 Management of Speech Disorders

Once the evaluation is complete, depending upon the severity and type of problems, we will plan the management. The child will be advised to attend speech therapy. In mild problems, they require short term management only and if the child is lagging behind a lot, it might require longer duration of therapy. In certain cases, only home training is required.

How to improve speech skills in 3 days?

It is not exactly possible to improve speech in 3 days.

For children:

• When the child is attending Speech therapy, the therapist will guide and demonstrate how to carry out the goal. Some children learn fast and some takes time due to factors like attention and concentration, cooperation, intelligence, amount of home training they get. So this indicates that, for a child to improve, we need to look into many aspects. Each child learns at different pace, and, so will be the improvement. It requires a lot of patience and hard work. Not only the child has to achieve the goals, he also needs to use it in different situations. We need to be very patient and look for the finest improvement in the child. Speech and language skills follow a developmental pattern, so they will be mastered over time.

For adults:

Depending on the nature and severity of the condition, adults can learn to improve their speech and gain command over a language. Furthermore, it takes longer for individuals with stuttering, aphasia, dysarthria and similar speech impediments to improve. However, for conditions like misarticulations and accent challenges, we have seen that individuals tend to improve faster. Firstly, it depends on how much practice is being done, and secondly how motivated the person is. Speech therapy works wonders with adults.

How to monitor improvements in speech skills.

In the beginning of Speech Therapy, the therapist will prepare a goal plan for certain duration. This is followed by tailor made activities to achieve the goals. With kids, parental involvement is also very crucial. After a certain period, the therapist can track the improvement. Comparing and contrasting video recordings and reassessment using standard tests are two sure shot ways to monitor improvements.

Modern Apps for improving speech

Below are the list of certain apps that will support in improving the speech skills.
Click here to Read on more Amazing Apps

• Articulation Station

  This app is used for child having difficulty with pronunciation. This help in practicing words; sentence and passages. Thus, improvement in speech can be observed.

• Spilingo App

  This app consists of games of aliens and spaceship. It is an interactive game. We focus on nouns, prepositions, adjectives, verbs and sentence formation.

• Speech4Good

  This app is for improving fluency of speech. Speech Therapist and People who stutter can use this. In this, we record and monitor our speech. It uses Delayed auditory Feedback.

• Voice Recording Apps

  This is available in almost all phones and we need to say or sing and record it. We can monitor the improvement in our voice before and after therapy.

  Click to Read more on Voice Apps

• Jellow App

  This app is an excellent app for children who are not speaking. It is  an AAC device (Alternative Augmentative Communication) and has lots of symbols which can be used for daily communication. Furthermore, it has the facility to give voice to speech. Also, we can customize according to our requirement too.

  Click to read more on Modern Apps

In conclusion, improving speech and language skills require a lot of patience. It is a gradual process. We need to find out what is wrong in the speech and understand the severity of the problem.  Thereby, we can plan the management and also monitor the progress. There are many apps also to help to improve the speech skills. Furthermore, as speech and language follows a developmental pattern, the improvement will also be gradual. It takes time for the brain to learn and unlearn the way speech is produced and with regular practice and motivation, adults can also improve a lot!