Teaching voiced velar stops to profoundly deaf children, using EPG?two case studies

Older deaf children who have had amplification and auditory training from an early age to promote maximal use of residual hearing, can still frequently present with unintelligible speech. They not only require access to new speech-teaching techniques, but more importantly, carefully planned, realistic therapy goals. This pilot study explores the use of EPG in teaching two profoundly deaf 10-year-olds how to articulate initial voiced velar stops in familiar phrases. Whereas previous traditional therapy methods had proved unsuccessful, the results with EPG were positively significant, and some generalization when reading untaught targets was seen. The post-therapy utterances were also judged as more intelligible, when rated by untrained listeners. The study took place over a 2-month period. Hence no long-term effects of therapy could be measured. However, the issues of long-term generalization of speech skills by the deaf, and the effects upon intelligibility are discussed.