Articulation and Students with Dyslexia | Reading Universe

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Skill Explainer

Articulation Skill Explainer

Nicole Ormandy, M.Ed.

How should I adjust my articulation instruction for my students with dyslexia?

Speech Disorders and Dyslexia
A speech sound disorder is different from dyslexia, though some children may have both. A student with a speech sound disorder demonstrates persistent difficulty producing specific speech sounds accurately beyond a developmentally appropriate age. You might hear them substituting /w/ for /r/ (wub for rub), /t/ for /c/ (tup for cup), or /f/ for /th/ (fumb for thumb); and it can be difficult to understand them when they speak (referred to as low speech intelligibility). Children with a speech sound disorder often need more support than the classroom recommendations we suggest here, and they'll likely be receiving services from a speech language pathologist.

Your students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities will not necessarily have difficulty learning to produce or articulate individual speech sounds. But some will; and you may notice their articulation differences become more noticeable during literacy-related tasks that place heavier demands on phonological processing, including phonological awareness activities, reading and spelling aloud, and working with lengthy, multisyllabic words (like distribution or reactively).

Their struggles may be most striking with sounds that are similar to each other, like short 'e' and short 'i', or /t/ and /d/. Distinguishing between those similar sounds can be really tough for some children (including some without dyslexia!).

It's also common in students with dyslexia for speech production to become slower and less accurate as we demand more of their language skills, like reading or repeating unfamiliar words, engaging in academic conversations, or any other situation that requires a student to multitask with remembering, thinking, and using expressive language.

Teaching Tips: How can I help my students?

Teacher tapping out word on her finger tips in small group lesson.

In addition to the strategies in this skill explainer, the following adjustments to your classroom instruction can help support your students with dyslexia and related learning disabilities:

1. Ensure your students hear your target word correctly in phonological awareness activities. Have students repeat each word before starting the task, maybe like this:

You might say,

We're going to segment the sounds in the word strap. Say strap.

Students reply,

Strap.

Then you would say,

Now let's segment the sounds in strap.

Together with students you'd say,

/s/, /t/, /r/, /ă/, /p/

2. Stretch out words with similar vowel sounds to draw attention to the differences. When you notice that a student consistently perceives similar vowel sounds incorrectly (or you see it in your data), make those sounds the focus of instruction and really enunciate or drag out the sounds to draw attention to them.

You might say:

What is the middle sound in beeeeeeeed [bed]?
What is the middle sound in biiiiiiiiiiiid [bid]?

Here's a demonstration of the Stretch and Shrink strategy by Mississipi teacher Monique Ealey.

Video thumbnail for Teaching Strategy Demo: Stretch and Shrink — Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book

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Monique Ealey: Today we are going to stretch and shrink the word map. When we stretch and shrink a word, we say all the sounds slowly so we can hear the individual sounds but still hear how they are connected. Watch and listen as I stretch and shrink the word map. Mmmmaaaaaap. Map! What was the first sound that you heard? /m/. What was the second sound? /ă/. And what was the last sound? /p/. Map.

3. Choose meaningful cues to help your students differentiate between sound pairs. Be mindful of whether a mirror and picture cues are the best scaffold or if oral cues are more helpful. For example, the sounds /p/ and /b/ are both made with the lips pressed together and one quick push of air, so a mirror won't help students notice the difference. This is when you'll want to draw attention to their voice box to feel the vibration of the voiced (/b/) versus unvoiced sound (/p/).

Our interactive sound cards offer audio files of the pronunciation, photos of mouth positions, and student friendly language for guiding students to produce the sounds.

Listen and learn about the features of the /b/ sound in the card below.

What You'll See As They're Learning — And How to Respond

Below you'll see examples of three kinds of errors your students with dyslexia may make that might look like a problem with articulation. Analyzing errors to determine whether they're a true articulation deficit versus a phonological error is important, because it will impact the way you respond through instruction or prompting.

What You See
(oral or written response, assessment)

What This Could Mean

What You Could Do (teacher instruction/action)

In a phoneme segmentation task, your student substitutes a sound in the target word:

You might say,

Tell me the sounds in pit.

The student responds,

/p/, /ĕ/, /t/.

Your student may have difficulty distinguishing between similar sounds.

Have your student repeat the target word to be sure they heard you correctly (pit, in this example). If repeating the word correctly leads to them segmenting correctly (/p/, /ĭ/, /t/), continue to incorporate words that contain the 'tricky' sounds (/ĭ/ vs. /ĕ/) as needed for reinforcement.

If, after they repeat the word accurately (pit), the student still articulates the wrong sound when they segment (/p/, /ĕ/, /t/), use oral cues to draw attention to the difference between the sound they're producing and the correct sound. You might say,

When you say /ĭ/, your mouth is slightly more closed than /ĕ/. Say /ĭ/ [student repeats].

Now say /ĕ/ [student repeats].

Continue practicing with these sounds in phonemic awareness activities and correct their errors as you go.

A student adds, omits, or transposes (switches the order) sounds when speaking (says silled for slid), reading aloud (reads cub as club), or spelling (spells cramp as cram).

Your student may have phonological processing difficulties that cause them to struggle with consonant blends ('sl', 'cl', 'mp').

Include lots of phoneme segmentation and blending practice with manipulatives or finger tapping to account for each individual sound.

A student reads, "Put the amuminum can in the bin" … instead of "aluminum" with an 'l'.

The phonological demands of multisyllabic and complex words can lead to your students with dyslexia making more errors than they would when they read simpler words.

These errors don't necessarily represent an overall problem with articulation.

Prompt your student to divide the word into syllables and focus on decoding one syllable at a time. If this was an error in a spoken conversation, you can model syllable segmentation and blending.

Say,

Repeat after me: a-lu-min-um, aluminum.

And when you're getting ready to read sentences or passages with multisyllabic words, you could add in some practice with clapping them into syllables and dividing them on a white board.

Corrective Feedback: Helping Your Students Learn from Their Mistakes

When students make mistakes with articulation, as they undoubtedly will, it's important that teachers know how to affirm their students' efforts and offer a quick correction that is delivered with understanding. This provides a supportive learning experience that builds on their initial attempt.

For example, if a student spells the word lab as lap, here's something you could try saying:

Look at your great work. Listen as I read what you wrote, and let's compare. You wrote lap. Let's tap all the sounds in lap together: /l/, /ă/, /p/, lap. The word we are spelling together is lab. Let's tap lab together: /l/, /ă/, /b/, lab. Lap and lab are similar. The only difference is the ending sounds, /p/ and /b/. Those are consonant pairs: /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced. That is such a smart mistake! Those are tricky!

Or if a student reads aloud,

The cat hid under the bid [bed].

You might say,

Look at this word again. Listen to the difference.

You'd stretch and exaggerate the vowel sound in each word saying,

biiiiiid, beeeeed

Do you see how our mouth is as open as possible for /ŏ/ and slightly more closed for /ŭ/? Since these vowels are so much alike, it can be challenging to read them correctly; but we'll keep practicing words with /ŏ/ versus /ŭ/ to make it easier!”

Teacher Tip

Discussing Articulation During Spelling
One of the biggest benefits of introducing the articulatory features to all students is for error correction during spelling. For example, if a student spells the word lab as lap, this interaction could happen:

Look at your great work. Listen as I read what you wrote and let's compare. You wrote lap.
Let's tap all the sounds in lap together: /l/, /ă/, /p/, lap. The word we are spelling together is lab.
Let's tap lab together: /l/, /ă/, /b/, lab. Lap and lab are similar.
The only difference is the ending sounds, /p/ and /b/. Those are consonant pairs: /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced.
That is such a smart mistake! Those are tricky!

Common Misunderstandings or Myths About Articulation and Dyslexia

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Myth: Speech production errors are unrelated to reading difficulties.

Reality: Speech production and perception difficulties, phonological processing weaknesses, and dyslexia can co-occur. In fact, early articulation and speech perception challenges may serve as warning signs for later reading difficulties, so you should monitor and flag any concerns with your school's speech-language pathologist or special ed teacher.

Myth: Incorrect responses during phonological awareness tasks always reflect weak phonological awareness.

Reality: Students may possess phonological awareness but have articulation issues that impact their responses. This is why modifying tasks can be necessary to determine true phonological awareness deficits versus articulation interference.

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