Jj is for Jottings 102.  Effect of Vowel Shapes on Consonant Sounds.

Following on from the previous article on Vowel Shapes, we will talk about the effect of vowel shapes on consonant sounds.  This is especially important in sound production for speech therapy and also useful when learning sound-letter links.  If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you read the previous article first, to make sense of what follows.

Here are some common examples of how the vowel shape can influence the production of a consonant.  This is not an exhaustive list, but these are major examples which crop up all the time.

EFFECTS OF VOWEL SHAPE AND LEARNING CONSONANT SOUNDS.

/k/ and /g/.

We make /k,g/ at the back of the mouth.  You keep the front of the tongue down, and raise the back of the tongue to meet the soft palate.  Young children frequently substitute /t/ for /k/ and /d/ for /g/. Examples are “tar” for “car”;  “dirl” for “girl”.  /t,d/ are made at the front of the mouth.  The tongue tip is up behind the top front teeth, and the back of the tongue is down.  So, in effect, the minimal-pairs  /t,d/ are the opposite of /k,g/.

Remember the sentence in the previous article which covers the position in the mouth of most vowels?  Here it is again:  “Who would know aught of art must work and then take his ease.”  We see from this that the back vowels are /oo/ as in “food”; /oo/ as in “book”; /oe/; /or/; and /o/.  These vowels will facilitate correct production of the back sounds /k,g/.  On the other hand, the front vowels /ee/; /i/; and /ay/ will undermine production of /k,g/ in favour of /t,d/.  I hasten to add that this occurs only in the early stages of learning the sounds.  Once children have had enough practice at producing the new sounds /k,g/ with vowels which help rather than hinder, they will have no trouble with vowels of any shape.

/s/ and /sh/.

A similar thing applies when teaching children who substitute /s/ for /sh/, another common sound error.  Once again, these remarks apply to the early stages of learning the new sound.  Once it has become established, children will be able to say the consonant sounds with any vowels, regardless of the shape of the mouth.  Having the lips pushed forward for /sh/ naturally facilitates correct sound production, so once again you would choose the same vowels as for learning /k,g/ to begin with and to “strengthen” the new sound.

/s/, on the other hand (and its minimal pair /z/), works better with a “smiley mouth”.   The /s/ needs to sound clear and whistly, not dull.  It can be quite amazing to hear the difference when a child makes the adjustment from a neutral lip position to a smiley position.  So, for /s/ and /z/, we need to choose the same vowels that facilitate /t,d/ i.e. high front vowels, which naturally produce a smiley mouth shape.

 

/w/ and /r/.

Substituting /w/ instead of /r/ is yet another common sound substitution.  It is in fact perfectly normal up to a certain age (see communication milestones), but /r/ still need to be taught quite frequently.  Since the sound substituted, /w/, involves the lips being pushed forwards, we avoid that group of vowels in the early stages of learning /r/.   Otherwise we will undermine the child’s efforts.

 

VOWEL SHAPE DOES NOT EFFECT SOME CONSONANTS.

Vowel shape does not affect some consonants eg. /p,b/.  And some effects are idiosyncratic i.e. some children find certain vowels undermine learning a new consonant with no apparent reason.  You just have to observe and make the appropriate adjustments as you go along.  As one of “my dads” said only yesterday, “These speech sounds are much more difficult that I thought.”

VOWEL SHAPES IN LEARNING SOUND-LETTER LINKS.

The effect here is simply that being very clear about all speech sounds will facilitate the learning of sound-letter links.  So it is important to shape the vowels correctly to help children differentiate between the frequently-confused pairs of /a/ and /u/, and /i/ and /e/.  Note that the members of these confused vowels pairs are close neighbours in The Sentence.  And this is why they are confused – because there isn’t a huge difference between the way in which they are produced and therefore in how they sound.  If you didn’t have any context, and asked a child to name a picture from a choice of “bag” or “bug”, you often don’t know which they are saying.  You could say that the way they pronounce the vowels meets in the middle.  The same can apply to i/e word pairs.  This is dealt with in some detail here and here.

ONE THING TO REMEMBER…

In your efforts to say sounds clearly for your child to be able to differentiate between them, don’t overdo it.  You can go too far and end up distorting the sound, which rather defeats the purpose.  As in most things, aim for a happy medium.

 

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