Interview with Wayne A. SecordAuthor of Eliciting Sounds: Techniques and Strategies for Clinicians
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Linda Schreiber: Hi Wayne. Thanks so much for chatting witIh me this afternoon. I understand you recently revised your classic resource Eliciting Sounds and I know our readers would be delighted to know more about this new edition.Wayne Secord: The new edition is really a robust publication. The ori
Linda Schreiber: Hi Wayne. Thanks so much for chatting witIh me this afternoon. I understand you recently revised your classic resource Eliciting Sounds and I know our readers would be delighted to know more about this new edition.Wayne Secord: The new edition is really a robust publication. The original idea [for the book] was created out of a major need years ago. There wasn't anything else like it at the time. And over the years, it has sold like wildfire. I mean this little book is really a classic.
The original version started out as a clinical aid; it was published in 1981 right after I got my doctorate, and after I had spent several years, I think seven, working as a school clinician. And like so many others at the time, I struggled to help kids produce their sounds right. So, over those school SLP years, I collected a number of techniques, even invented a few myself if you can believe that. So in 1981 Charles Merrill published my little book. We knew the book needed to be brought up-to-date in terms of science. And there were many more techniques to tell people about so I pulled together Suzanne Boyce, who is an expert on /r/; Jo Ann Donohue, who is the assistant director of our clinic and a person I've worked with all my life here at Ohio State (I've known her ever since we were students together); Rob Fox, (our department chair) who's a brilliant speech scientist who was sort of our science editor; and Rich Shine, a friend I've had for years who is an expert on lisping. So I got them all together and we said let's take what we have, frame the science right, add incredibly good illustrations, and make it all as practical and clear as possible. Those were pretty good goals, don't you think?
So we did just that. There are now over 85 diagrams and illustrations or drawings of the various phonemes, including consonants, vowels, diphthongs, consonant /r/, and vowel /r/. And there are well over 500 techniques in the book covering all consonants and vowels, with very clear descriptions for how to elicit them, how to get a client to say them right.
We have a whole chapter devoted to consonant and vowel /r/. The chapter begins on page 128 and ends on 158; a 30-page chapter on the science behind consonant and vowel-like /r/. We included all the charts and graphs and info explaining why /r/ is so difficult to produce. We take all our techniques and we recast them all in science. So when you see the many different tongue positions for /r/, you also see MRI diagrams and photos giving a clear description of how they are made. That doesn't exist anywhere else and Suzanne Boyce did a stellar job on the whole thing. Wow! I mean it. She did a stellar job.
Linda: Oh really; MRI productions of /r/?
Wayne: Yes, midsagittal MRIs of sustained productions of /r/ showing different pharyngeal constrictions, pharyngeal positions of the tongue, and pharyngeal postures. And you see all the different /r/s and you finally understand how there could be that many different kinds of /r/s that are all capable of being produced. Yet most clinicians know only one or two techniques really, so this will make life much easier for them. I assure you.
Linda: That's why we get frustrated trying to elicit correct /r/ productions.
Wayne: And with all the different tongue positions and pharyngeal postures, we give different techniques. We go back and run through all of the different techniques we have in the book and tell which ones are likely to produce those postures.
Linda: And that's all for /r/?
Wayne: That's all for /r/. The whole book is really quite remarkable. It's simply good science to practice. And it's science-to-practice for every phoneme along with really good diagrams that we spent hours and hours getting to look like they should. I mean honestly, in Eliciting Sounds, the mouth does indeed look like a mouth.
Linda: So when you say "science to practice," you're referring to the MRIs which indicate what is actually happening in the mouth?
Wayne: Sort of! When we say science, we're talking about using the right terminology to describe production, and getting the drawings and illustrations right so the tongue looks like the tongue. We had a superb artist from Delmar who spent hours and hours getting the diagrams to look exactly the way they should look.
The goal was to give clinicians as many practical techniques as possible. We did that! You know the hardest part is when a child is not stimulable, and, when you can't find his target sound produced anywhere correctly in context. Then you know you have to roll up your sleeves and show him how to do it. You really need to know exactly how a sound is produced, that is, exactly how the articulators should be positioned; and then you need to have a practical set of techniques that are written in a language you can tell to a young child.
Linda: So the revision also has new appendices to help with stimulability, screening, and strategies for clients who lisp.
Wayne: Yes, we added very specific procedures for testing speech sound stimulability. I do not think stimulability procedures are spelled out anywhere, or at least, not in any modern textbook. We show clinicians how to do it all like a game so you can really capture the child's attention and thereby, increase the likelihood of him saying it right [Appendix A].
We have also included quick (contextual) screens for every speech sound (consonants, vowels, and diphthongs). So in a matter of just a few seconds you can have a child repeat a word list of 20 to 25 words and systematically test the production of any sound in a variety of phonetic contexts [Appendix B].
And then Appendix C is just a wonderful thing from Rich Shine. He outlines very practical elicitation strategies for clients who lisp. He takes you through the process step-by-step, showing you exactly how he gets a child to produce a correct /s/ sound and his procedures are especially good for kids with lateral lisps.
Linda: It's a book with everything you'd need.
Wayne: Everybody seems to struggle with frontal and lateral lisps for sure and that notorious vowel-like /r/. And so this book is all about helping clinicians get better in those areas. The preface lays out our vision for the book, which, as I said, was to get the science right, organize all of the techniques around that science, but still make it all immensely practical so people could get it right so-to-speak, right away. We cover phonetic placement techniques, motor-kinesthetic methods, and sound approximation strategies.
Linda: I can't wait to see this book. Now you've really got me interested in it.
Wayne: So it went from about 80 pages to about 192. That's pretty good and where are you going to get that for $38.
Linda: I can't believe the price is so reasonable. And SLPs can find your book at the Thomson Delmar website?
Wayne: If they Google for "Eliciting Sounds," they'll find it. Or they can go right to the Thomson Delmar website.
And by the way, in the acknowledgments of the book, we offer our sincere thanks and praise to the many people who've come before us who are well-known speech-language pathologists or excellent clinicians. Some have passed on, some are major leaders today; but all of these people from articulation to phonology have somehow contributed, either directly or indirectly, to the techniques in this book.
And then there's a wonderful dedication to Van Riper that you have to read because imagine getting a letter from Van Riper out of the blue like I did; a fan letter from Charles Van Riper back in 1993. Just imagine how scared I was to open that thing up
Linda: So would he have approved of all the techniques and uses and changes?
Wayne: Charles Van Riper would love this book because he was the ultimate science-to-practice kind of guy. He believed in knowing it all well, but his bottom line was always helping your client to gain a conscious presence for his new behavior. That is, show him how to do it right and then motivate him to own it because in the long run, it's not you, it's him or her that has to do it right all the time. How lucky we were to have him!
Linda: Wayne, thanks for keeping this book alive!