How to improve a child’s speech clarity, rate of speech and volume using the Microphone Effect. Suitable for children over 5 years of age.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
I want to talk to you about a technique that’s really effective for children – usually over the age of five – who are presenting with articulation difficulties. There may be a lack of clarity in their speech, or their volume may be too high or too low, or they are speaking too quickly. So their rate is too fast or possibly too slow – generally, it can be too fast. For children who have poor intonation, this technique is very simple, but it can be highly effective.
It’s been called “Ear-Voice Connection”. It was developed by Paul Madaule, who is the director of the Listening Centre in Toronto, and it involves the child using their right hand, putting it in a fist, so no hole, and like a microphone, they place their hand in front of their mouth about an inch away. Then they either sing a song or tell you a story, or whatever.
The idea is that the middle-low and high frequencies of their voice bounce off their hand back to the right ear, so it’s important to use the right hand because it’s got the quickest connection with the left brain (so that they’re able to better monitor what they’re saying) in terms of speech production and language. Usually, within a minute or two, you start to notice, they’re clearer, and their rate slows down, or their intonation is better, or voice quality or speech quality, in general, is better.
I’d recommend doing it for a couple of minutes to five minutes every day, if you can, with no pressure on your child at all. You just encourage them to tell you a story or sing a song or whatever it is, they’d like to do vocally or verbally.
It’s very simple, but it can be highly effective. It’s a precursor, often, to us using something like the LIFT programme. In the LIFT programme, which is one of the intensive sound therapy programmes that we do, it has got a microphone on it, which develops that “Ear-Voice Connection” even more, but by doing the microphone effect, or the “Ear-Voice Connection” work, even using the pretend mic, that can get everything moving in the right direction.
The other thing for younger children who may not be at that level, they may not be five, or they may not be at that level that they have enough speech to do be able to do this yet, you can use your hand or alternatively, you can use something like a little echo mic (not a real microphone because the sound gets absorbed by that but little echo mic) where any sound at all that they make is bouncing back to their ears.
So that’s just a little something I wanted to talk to you about in terms of the “Ear-Voice Connection”, it’s a great approach.
If you want more information about it, please let us know. It can be highly effective. You can do it on a daily basis, you can even do it a couple of times a day if it’s something that your child enjoys.
If you’ve got an older child or child over the age of eight or nine, you can look at doing it for a longer period of time, maybe five to ten minutes. They can even do it if they’re reading. Have the book high, not down low, because this causes a closed-off their airstream. So up high, so that it’s at the level that of their eye, maybe it’s on a little stand or something, and then they can do the little microphone effect as they’re reading. You’ll notice that their reading is even better. That’s something I’d highly, highly recommend for those kids who present in that way.
I hope that’s been helpful and I look forward to coming back to you with more and more ideas, and more approaches that are going to be able to help your child.
The other thing is the microphone effect is something that can be carried out by teachers in the classroom and by resource teachers as well. It’s such a highly effective technique.
