Speech Sound Intervention Approaches
There are a range of therapy techniques that speech pathologists use to support children with a phonological disorder, which is a type of speech sound disorder.
When a child has a phonological disorder, it’s not that they can’t make a sound—it’s that they haven’t yet learned the “rules” of how sounds fit together to form the words we use in everyday conversations.
Here’s a breakdown of five common approaches speech pathologists use to treat phonological disorders:
1. The Stimulability Approach
This approach is ideal for children aged 2–4 who can only say a few sounds and find it hard to copy new ones.
Rather than focusing on perfecting a single sound, the speech pathologist targets all 21 consonant sounds during each session. The goal is to help children increase the sounds they can produce and become more confident trying new ones.
The approach often uses fun characters (e.g., “Baby Bear” for /b/) and hand gestures or body movements associated with the sounds. It acts as a “stepping stone” to other therapy approaches once the child has acquired more sounds.
2. The Cycles Approach
This approach is best for children whose speech is difficult to understand, who use many error patterns, or who have cognitive delays.
Up to four error patterns are targeted during a 10–15 week therapy block, after which the cycle repeats.
A sound must be stimulable (able to be copied) before it is included in a cycle. Typically, after 3–4 cycles, speech intelligibility improves.
3. The Complexity Approach
This approach suits children with moderate to severe phonological impairments who still make multiple non-age appropriate speech errors.
Instead of starting with easier sounds, therapy focuses on later-developing, more complex sounds or clusters like “str” (as in strong) or “spl” (as in splash). Research shows that practising complex sounds often leads to improvements in simpler sounds (like /s/ or /p/) without extra practice.
The goal is faster overall progress by tackling the most challenging sounds first.
4. The Minimal Pairs Approach
This approach helps children who use a few common developmental patterns (for example, saying “tea” instead of “key” – a pattern called Fronting).
It focuses on how changing a sound can change the meaning of a word. Therapy uses pairs of words that differ by only one sound, such as tap vs cap or date vs gate.
This approach encourages children to produce sounds differently to avoid confusion in everyday communication and helps them think about whether what they are saying makes sense.
5. The Multiple Oppositions Approach
This approach is for children who use a “favoured sound” for many other sounds—a situation called phoneme collapse. For example, a child might use /d/ for /s/, /f/, /k/, and /sh/.
Unlike other approaches that focus on one or two sounds at a time, multiple oppositions addresses the whole collapse at once.
The speech pathologist selects up to four sounds the child is substituting and shows how their favoured sound differs from the correct sounds using minimal pairs (e.g., dough vs go, dough vs sew).
By teaching multiple sounds simultaneously, the child’s brain is encouraged to “reorganise” its sound system, helping them understand that using the same sound for different words can cause confusion.
Just like a teacher may change a lesson if a student is struggling or bored, a speech pathologist may change therapy approaches during a block. This could be due to:
Success and growth: As your child masters new sounds, the previous approach may no longer support their next steps.
Hitting a plateau: If progress stalls, a different approach may spark a breakthrough.
Motivation and mood: Children learn best when therapy is fun! Changing approaches can reignite interest and engagement.
Therapy approaches are carefully chosen to help children communicate clearly and confidently with the people around them.
If you have questions about phonological intervention approaches, our team at Small Sprouts Therapy is always happy to help.