Are you an SLP working on /r/ articulation therapy? Working with students to get this tricky sound isn’t easy, so here are some production tips from an experienced SLP (me!). I hope these suggestions help you gain ideas for your /r/ articulation speech therapy sessions.
Before you read this blog post, please check out the previous 2 posts, which will give you some steps to dig into before the ones outlined below.
My Favorite Techniques to Produce /R/
Before we get started, remember that /r/ articulation therapy takes time. There is no magic bullet or perfect cue. Different prompts work for different students, and oftentimes the biggest thing students need is consistency and time. I’ve been an SLP for a long time - and it still can take weeks or months for my students to get the /r/ sound in isolation. Some students in particular seem resistant to therapy by choice. For example, middle or high school students who don’t want to come to speech. While other students are truly trying their best and just always seem to be producing /r/ “the old way” - despite your prompts and models. Try new prompts, by all means. Overall, work on the following: consistency; getting your students to try different things; and offering lots of opportunities for self-reflection. This self-reflection is so your students can figure out what they did differently when their produced /r/ sounds closer to their target “strong /r/ sound.” In general, I’ve outlined the suggestions below in the order that I try them in my own therapy.
One more note - my goal here isn’t to provide new ways to elicit the /r/ sound that you haven’t heard of before. My goal is to outline the most effective /r/ prompts I’ve found in the order that I’ve found them effective. I hope these tips are as helpful to your /r/ therapy as they have been for mine. Some of the tips below will work best for word-level production for students who don’t have the /r/ sound at all (using coarticulation, the l-er trick). While other tips are best for students who have word-initial /r/ but need to work on vocalic /r/. Typically, I work on word-initial /r/ first, followed by teaching either vocalic /r/ (I prefer starting with /ar/) and blends (you can do either/or first).
So, let’s get to it!
Using Coarticulation and Alveolar Sounds
This technique is one that is the newest to me, but has been so effective it’s now one of the things I try first. Consider teaching a retroflex first (tongue near alveolar ridge or tongue tip up sound), while letting your student know that the words you are choosing start with the tongue already set up for a strong /r/ sound. Demonstrate this by producing an alveolar sound with your tongue tip curled up. Have your student make a few alveolar sounds (for example /t, d, l, s, z/) and see what their tongue does. Teach that the tongue tip will drop backwards and down slightly (barely at all!) to create a strong /r/ sound.
Some words you may want to start with have the /str/ blend, such as strong, strength, or strawberry. This is to capitalize on the complexity approach, but also because it’s a blend with two alveolar sounds. You can also try other alveolar sound combinations or blends such as /dr/ or /tr/. Or even combine a /dj/ or /ch/ sound (like in the word jury or chair) to see if you can benefit from that alveolar coarticulation.
Again, the effectiveness in this approach isn’t just choosing the word set. The key is really working on creating awareness of this “tongue up” sound and new tongue position. The word set is just a secondary prompt to help.
Starting with /ar/
As SLPs, we know there is both a tongue tip up (retroflexed) and a tongue tip down (bunched) /r/ sound. The mistake I’ve seen here is assuming your learner will only do one or the other. As an example, I use a tongue tip up /r/ for the /ar/ sound but a tongue tip down /r/ for the /er/ sound. Try out some vowel /r/ sound word lists for yourself. Do you switch or only produce one type of /r/? Since the /r/ becomes vocalic, what each of us do may vary. Given this information, it’s most effective to teach your student both types of /r/ sounds and to really work on self-discrimination and self-awareness. As your student starts to develop the strong /r/ sound, they can then let you know which type of /r/ they produced.
I typically start with /ar/ and particularly word-final /ar/ (such as in the word “car”). I do this in order to teach a retroflexed /r/ for the /ar/ sound, while also describing the retroflex production and offering this as a choice. Then, in almost all cases, moving into a tongue tip up /r/ for the word car. I like using word-final because I can ask the student to hold on to that /r/ sound and keep a “pocket of air” between their molars so their mouth is slightly open. For these early stages of teaching /r/, it really is essential that you see inside your student’s mouth. They should be able to see this too to ensure they are holding on to that final /r/ sound. This can be done using a mirror, or in the case of telepractice, looking at the video of themselves on the screen.
I did want to mention that I know several SLPs who start with /er/ because they feel like it’s the most difficult /r/ sound to teach and it is so common in the English language. This trick really works for them. There is no one right way to do this, so see what works for you and your learners. I have still another SLP friend who swears by teaching /ear/ as her first vocalic /r/ because the sides of the tongue are already up, which makes a lot of sense, as well. Again - none of these ways is less valid than the others, whichever method works for you and your students is the approach to take.
Does your student have initial /r/? Try the whisper trick!
So this isn’t a trick for /r/ in isolation so much as a tip for learners who only have word-initial /r/. In that case, you are in luck and /r/ therapy usually is a bit easier. I’ve found these learners often have no idea what they are doing when they produce a strong /r/ versus and old way /r/ so it also takes a lot of reflective work after each production to try and figure out what their mouth is doing.
For the whisper trick, you blend word-initial /r/ words with word-final /r/ words. For example, some word sets might be:
bear-red
chair-rose
pear-read
For this trick, your student will start with repeating the second word after both words are produced. Once that is established, the student will begin whispering the second word, then moving onto just mouthing the second word, and finally just thinking about the second word. Take your time with this technique, but it has proven an excellent way to work on word-final /r/ for many of my own learners.
/l/ to /r/
Of the tips I’m sharing in this article, this one works the least amount of the time for me. I still wanted to share it because when it works, it seems like such an easy way to elicit the /r/ sound in isolation. Cue your student to make an /l/ sound and explain to them that the new /r/ sound is going to involve the tiniest of tongue movements from an /l/ sound. For all of these techniques part of the success is just working on supporting the students to believe they can make a change. I’ve found more success when I do this with my student so they can hear my production and match it, so we do it at the exact same time at first. Work together to do an “lllll….rrrrr” or “l-er” sound by slowly pulling the tongue back on the roof of the mouth.
As you work on establishing the /r/ sound, remember that key factors are time, consistency and a belief from both you and your student that a change can happen. It’s easy for both SLPs and students to start to get frustrated with this phase of speech therapy. Take your time, work on building some self-awareness skills for your student through practice, and remember - you can do this!
