Phrasing: One Tool Teens Will Use (with Adaptations)
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About the presenter: Kathy Swiney, CCC/SLP, BRS-FD. A fluency specialist, author, and speaker, Kathy practices in two public high schools and private practice in Houston, Texas. The majority of the people on her caseload are teens and young adults who stutter. Kathy founded the Houston chapter of TWIST, an NSA support group for teens who stutter. |
Phrasing: One Tool Teens will Use (With Adaptations)
by Kathy Swiney
from Texas, USA
Working with teens who stutter in two large urban high schools has been challenging and rewarding giving me insight into the lives of today's teens. I learned far more from these remarkable teens than they learned from me!
In my clinical experience, teens are motivated to work on their speech if:
- they know how and why the strategy will help them,
- the techniques allow teens fit into their peer group rather than stand out from it,
- the topics/materials are engaging and relevant to their daily lives.
Phrasing as a treatment technique has been around since Van Riper. He used the technique in stuttering modification and advocated adding pauses when practicing cancellations as negative reinforcement for stuttering. More recently, Reardon & Yaruss (2004), Reitzes (2006; 2006b) and others recommend phrasing to slow the rate of conversation without slowing the rate of speech.
From a teen's perspective this is a subtle but very significant difference. Slow your rate of speech, and you are an oddball; slow the rate of conversation and you are in the company of the great speakers of the world.
The intervention strategy presented here was designed to provide an opportunity for teens to experience phrasing in a hierarchy of tasks. Starting with clinician-provided visual cues for the phrase points, the speaker gradually progresses toward the use of phrasing in spontaneous speech. In my clinical practice, this strategy has proven to be a popular and effective tool for teens. One client admitted he was helping his cousin in another city use the technique.
Hierarchal Phrasing Strategy for Teens:
Provide a visual model of phrasing until the teen gets the "feel" of where to insert phrases in his oral reading and speech. Start by having the TWS read text. The demands and capacity model (Starkweather, 1987) suggests that if the cognitive, linguistic and emotional demands decrease, a speaker's fluency often increases. Using printed material removes the demands of determining the topic, vocabulary and language format of an oral task.
Choose high interest topics for reading and speaking tasks. Select text that is below the teen's reading level even if you have to edit the text. The more teens focus on the "weirdness" of the topic, the less they focus on how they speak. This also tends to decrease speaking fears and increase fluency.
Initially, provide visual phrasing cues to further reduce the demands. Next, reduce and then eliminate these cues. Transition the phrasing technique into text and speaking situations in the teen's daily life (i.e. textbooks, oral reports, and casual social interactions).
Selecting the text
Find teen-friendly text by internet searching topics such as:
- dumbest criminals
- "teen + invention",
- "prom",
- "Guinness World Records",
- "weird news" etc.
The following are articles I have used:
- Teen survives being compacted in a trash truck
- Teen builds roller-coaster in backyard
- Dog shoots man
Formatting the Text:
Adapt the text three times with three levels of visual cues for phrasing.
- Level 1: Type each phrase on a separate line. Use the natural linguistic phrases occurring in the text. Formatting is done by the clinician. Add the instructions at the top of the article.
Level 1: Read this article aloud. Take a pause or easy breath between each line or natural break. Start each phrase with an easy onset.
Teen survives being compacted in recycling truck
Adapted from Associated Press for educational purposes; republishing prohibitedPolice say
a teenage boy has survived
after being dumped
into the back
of a recycling truck
and compacted. - Level 2: Print the text in paragraph format. The clinician uses slash marks (//) for the phrasing on two-thirds of the article. The teen adds phrase cues for the remaining section of text.
The teen's phrase points in Level 2 don't have to match the clinician's from Level 1. The target is short linguistic phrases that occur where it seems natural based on the meaning of the sentence. Add the instructions below at the top of the article.
Level 2: Read this article aloud. Take a pause or easy breath between each natural break. Punctuation marks are always phrasing breaks. The "//" is a cue for other breaks. Start each phrase with an easy onset. If you start to stutter, relax out of it. Don't wrestle the stutter. Mark the phrases in the last section of text on this page. Conjunctions and prepositions are good places to create a phrase. This isn't difficult. Just put pauses where it sounds natural to you.Teen survives being compacted in recycling truck
Adapted from Associated Press for educational purposes; republishing prohibitedPolice say // a teenage boy has survived // after being dumped // into the back // of a recycling truck // and compacted.
- Level 3: Text is printed as it appears in the original document. Put the following statement at the top of the page.
Level 3: Visually scan the text before you read it aloud. Break any sentence longer than five or six words into phrases or "chunks". Punctuation marks are visual cues that a phrase is needed. Conjunctions and prepositions are also good places to create a phrase. This isn't difficult. Just put pauses where it sounds natural to you. When you read the text aloud, start each phrase with an easy onset. If you start to stutter, relax out of it. Don't wrestle the stutter.
Teen survives being compacted in recycling truck
Adapted from Associated Press for educational purposes; republishing prohibitedPolice say a teenage boy has survived after being dumped into the back of a recycling truck and compacted.
-
Level 4: The final stage of the phrasing hierarchy addresses the important transitioning of the skills into conversational speech which are also presented in a hierarchy of difficulty based on complexity.
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Summarize the article your own words. Since the vocabulary, story sequence and general syntactic complexity will be comparable to the reading task, the linguistic complexity is reduced, providing the highest probability of increased fluency.
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The second task varies depending on the content of the stimulus material. The clinician should formulate a question that requires the speaker to identify facts presented in the article. In the example presented, one could ask In what way was this teen unlucky? And, in what way was he lucky? While there is a change in the sequence and/or structure of the response, the vocabulary generally remains the same.
The final task, involves the speaker expressing opinions about the subject matter or behaviors depicted in the article. The clinician should select questions to generate vocabulary different from the terms used in the text. During this task, the linguistic structure and content speaker's responses will vary significantly from the source text. This activity is an opportunity for the clinician to express some opposition to the speaker's opinions or conclusions. However, it is suggested that you provide some good-natured disagreement only after the speaker is very comfortable and confident using phrasing. In the example presented, one could ask In your opinion, are boot camps too harsh for teens? Explain your stance. Finally, the clinician gradually transitions phrasing skills to academic text and conversational speech. This task is easier once the speaker has experienced success in the hierarchical reading tasks.
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A specific example of this technique is provided in the attached files:
References
- Reardon, N. A. & Yaruss, J.S. (2004). The Source for Stuttering: Ages 7-18. East Moline, IL: LinguiSystems.
- Reitzes, P. (2006). Five fun activities to practice pausing with children who stutter. The Journal of Stuttering Therapy, Advocacy and Research, 1:102-110.
- Reitzes, P. (2006b). Pausing: Reducing the frequency of stuttering. The Journal of Stuttering Therapy, Advocacy and Research, 1:64-78.
- Starkweather, C. W. (1987). Fluency and Stuttering. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Van Riper, C. (1973) The Treatment of Stuttering (2 ed.) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
SUBMITTED: June 12, 2012
