Are you a speech language pathologist working on /r/ sound production with your learners? I’d argue the /r/ sound is not only the trickiest to treat, but can take the longest to generalize. Working on this sound is just plain difficult. Let me help you so that teaching this sound feels easier and more productive, leading to more progress with your students.
This post is sponsored by this /R/ Articulation Bloodsuckers Reading Unit.
Before We Begin
This post is a part of a blog series, so if you haven’t read the last blog post, click back to read that one first - it’s all about what to do before you start working on /r/ sound production, and those tips are essential. Teaching the /r/ sound takes a long time. I want to start out with some encouragement. The /r/ is one of the most common sounds in the English language, which means that your student has likely had hundreds of thousands (or millions?) of incorrect productions over their lifetime.
A second challenge is that many school districts have not been treating /r/ until students reach age 8 due to outdated articulation norms. We now know we should begin treating /r/ at the age of 5 due to more updated articulation norms (from McLeod & Crowe 2018). Now that the targeted age has been updated, I do expect we will all see students progress more quickly in /r/ articulation therapy. This is expected because learners would have been producing /r/ “the old way” for a shorter length of time, so hopefully the pattern will be less ingrained and students will be more stimulable. Of course, only time will tell. Still, this is a reason for SLPs to be optimistic about the future of /r/ articulation speech therapy sessions.
Common First Productions/Student Mistakes
As you guide your learners, there are several common mistakes that students make when attempting to make a “strong /r/ sound.” Below I’ll outline the most common mistakes, and some suggested prompts for when you encounter this.
Clenching the Jaw - students do this to lessen the space between their tongue and the roof of their mouth. While it’s true that their tongue does need to be hovering much higher to produce a strong /r/ sound, it unfortunately doesn’t result in a strong /r/ sound. When students do this, I encourage them to put an “air pocket” between their teeth to help keep their teeth lightly apart. This also allows me to see in their mouth a bit better for the next cue I give - which is to curl their tongue (more on specific prompts later in this post). Another tip for this is to use a mirror so students can see that their teeth are lightly apart. Or alternatively if it is a telepractice session, have the learner look at the video of themselves to make sure their teeth are gently apart. If it is an in person session, I use a tongue depressor on the second widest height. I hold on to one end of the stick, and the other is between the student’s molars to guide their teeth gently apart. To do this, hold the tongue depressor horizontally between their molars so it’s not on the flat side but instead turned 90 degrees from the flattest side to the wider side. A helpful secondary effect of this process is that I’m able to see in their mouth better.
Rounding the Lips - this common mistake is when learners will round their lips into a distorted /r/ sound which may sound a bit like a /w/ or /o/ sound. A cue I usually give for this is “smiling lips.” With this particular cue, we are trying to get learners to do the opposite of what they are doing now. That said, “smiling lips” is a pretty extreme example, because our lips shouldn’t actually smile for the /r/ sound. So, if rounded lips is one side of the spectrum and smiling lips is the other side, we want the learner to eventually find a place within the middle for a more natural looking (and sounding) /r/ sound. At the beginning stages of sound production, the prompt of “smiling lips” is the most helpful in my experience (just to contrast the extreme rounded lips). As time moves forward, most students drop this extreme lip posture as they attain a strong sounding /r/. For the students that don’t, we work on “square lips” once they have a strong /r/ sound.
A Throat Sound (guttural) - this distorted production is much less common than the previous two, but still occurs from time to time. This results in a sound similar to gargling mouthwash. Learners do this distorted production because they can hear there is much more tension in a strong /r/ sound, but instead of putting tension in their tongue, they are putting tension in their throat. When this happens, you can encourage your student that they are correctly hearing tension in the /r/ sound. Then cue your student that the sound should be a result of the tongue holding tension, not the throat. To get them out of that pattern and achieve a mouth-centered (rather than throat-centered) production, you may want to try some of the following: yawn-sighs (remember that from your voice class?); sing the /r/ sound; or whisper the /r/ sound.
A Hybrid of Any of The Above (aka Doing the Sound Exactly the Same) - very often students will use a hybrid of any of the common mistakes above. It’s very likely you’ll need to use a combination of prompts. For many students, whatever they were doing before, they’ll continue to do (as in exactly the same, without any change) as you work to elicit the /r/ sound. This is one of the most frustrating parts of eliciting the /r/ sound. Here’s an example of how these early sessions usually go (and yes, even for experienced SLPs):
SLP: “So, we are making a new /r/ sound. For this sound, you’ll need to keep tension in your tongue. First I want you to lift the sides of your tongue by your molars. Some people call this hamburger tongue. Speech language pathologists like me call it the lateral side margins of your tongue. If you raise this part of your tongue, the tip of your tongue can be down or up, and you’ll get a strong /r/ sound. Let’s try.”
Student: “/oooo/”
SLP: “I noticed your lips were round there. Let’s work on smiling lips to get your lips out of the way. Look at my tongue and remember the sides of your tongue by your molars are up. Let’s try again. The /r/ sound is tricky and it takes practice!”
Student: “/oooooo/”
SLP: “I noticed your lips were still round. Let’s pull out a mirror. Watch my mouth. This is smiling lips.”
Student: /unknown vowel sound with throat tension/
SLP: “I noticed you are getting tension. That’s great. Producing the /r/ sound in the new way requires tension. Just like we flex our muscles, the tongue is a muscle. Let’s tense the back sides of your tongue near your molars. (SLP uses tongue depressor to touch lateral side margins of student’s tongue if needed). These sides of your tongue should touch your teeth. Also, another way to make your /r/ sound is to do that but with your tongue curled up like this (show student retroflex /r/ or tongue tip up /r/). Let’s give it a try.”
Student: /same production as previously/ “I can’t do it!”
Remember this - getting a strong /r/ sound typically isn’t done in just a few sessions - even with experienced SLPs. Many times, an SLP will use all the resources they can, and all the prompts they can think of, and a student will still continue to do the /r/ sound in the old way. This is because of motor planning, as well as the huge amount of time a student has incorrectly produced this sound. This process requires patience, encouragement and staying the course - for both the student and the SLP.
So what is an SLP to do? My best encouragement is to follow the steps outlined in this post to cue your student. This process may seem repetitive. When we learn something new, our most common motor pattern (in this case, the old /r/) will persist. While it does often help to cue a student “remember, we are making this sound in a different way - even if you think it doesn’t sound perfect, I want you to move your tongue in a different way.” That said, it really is true that sometimes the only thing that truly makes a difference is practice over time. My second biggest piece of advice is to make sure you can see in your student’s mouth to see what they are doing. Chances are, the tongue is laying flat for a vowel-like sound. A third effective cue I’ve used to encourage the teeth apart is to curl the tongue tip up and tell my student “I should be able to see the underside of your tongue.”
Whatever you do, remember this step can take weeks or months. If you have any questions about production of the /r/ sound, my next blog post will be on more specific tips to elicit the /r/ sound. If you have an /r/ question you want answered in an upcoming blog post, feel free to use this contact page to ask your question. I may not be able to get back to you, but I will answer the most common questions in upcoming blog posts.
Are You Working With A Student On The /R/ Sound At The Sentence Or Reading Level?
I create learning resources for busy SLPs looking for print-and-go materials for telepractice or in person /r/ lessons. These reading resources are perfect for groups because they not only target the /r/ sound but also vocabulary and comprehension.
Check out this Bloodsuckers R/ Reading Unit, which is full of motivating readings for your learners to practice their /r/ sounds while also learning fun facts about animals (my students love to share these facts with friends and family). This unit includes animals like the sea lamprey, vampire bat, and more.
