Stuttering Therapy Reading Exercises
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This sample reading exercies program for stuttering therapy has been prepared to help you get started using your FluencyCoach software. To download FluencyCoach free trial version, click here.
The focus of this sample reading exercise program is the "k" sound, a commonly problematic sound for the majority of persons who stutter. The program consists of three parts - Word list, Tongue twisters, and Poetry.
• The Word list, consisting of 200 words, divided into eight groups, represents the most common English language sound clusters that include the "k" sound. Read the words in the groups 1 through 8 out loud while using FluencyCoach with Delayed Auditor Feedback set to between 75 and 125. To record your speech for further analysis, use the Record and Playback feature of FluencyCoach. Note which words give you the most difficulty, or which ones do not come out right, when you listen to your voice via delayed auditory feedback or the recording you made using the Record and Playback feature of FluencyCoach and make up a list of your own based on your exercise needs and the vocal challenges you feel you need to face.
In addition to using these words as a part of daily reading exercises, you can use them to practice using diaphragmatic breathing, for slow reading, other reading exercises, as instructed by your speech language pathologist.
• Tongue twisters are a favorite with speech language pathologists. First, read the 15 tongue twisters below slowly, with delayed auditory feedback set to 225. On subsequent readings, decrease the delay to the level you are comfortable with and read the tongue twisters at your normal speaking rate.
• While the particular poem we chose for you here does not contain in marked frequency the "k" sound on which this exercise program is focused, the choice to include it here was no arbitrary matter. The selection of three heroic stanzas from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by George Gordon Byron are written in English iambic pentameter. The regularity of an iamb (one stressed, one unstressed syllable) and of iamb's per line (5 iambs or 5 stressed and 5 unstressed syllables), is conducive of a steady, measured speech, particularly in the first stanza where pauses signaled by punctuation correspond to line breaks (less so in subsequent stanzas containing caesuras and enjambments).
Word list
• Initial K followed by a consonant Crab Cram Crumb Crimp Crib Crime Chrome Chronic Crew Crown Crow Creep Crop Crease Croup Club Clay Clue Clone Clap Cluster Clown Clan Cloy Clinic |
• Initial K followed by a vowel Car Coral Cure Cur Cuirass Quirk Key Quiz Keel Kink Cat Card Canon Cauldron Cool Koala Cab Can Case Cause Kiss Coupon Cape Common Kiwi
|
• Medial K preceded and followed a vowel Accord Lackey Raucous Abacus Akin Provocateur Prevaricate Locate Acacia Precarious Blockade Placate Aqueduct Aquarium Loquacious Placard Equal Vacuity Locker Focus Bacchus Racket Second Saccharine |
• Final K preceded by a vowel Stack Back Hack Rake Bake Stake Make Look Brook Rook Hook Meek Reek Streak Creek Stick Brick Wick Music Luck Duck Rock Lock Strike Like |
• Medial K preceded and followed by a consonant Screw Scribe Ascribe Prescribe Describe Scroll Scream Scrape Scruples Muskrat Marksman Irksome Concrete Function Compunction Unction Sanctified Sanction Sanctimonious Anxious Anxiety Rambunctious Inkstand Minx Mulct |
• Medial K preceded by a vowel, followed by a consonant Alacrity Acrid Secret Secrete Acrimonious Lachrymose Accrue Preclude Suckle Pickle Sickle Tickle Sector Sectarian Lactate Actor Reactor Reaction Fraction Fiction Acne Arachnid Hackneyed Acknowledge Handkerchief |
• Medial K preceded by a consonant, followed by a vowel Arcade Arcane Market Parking Lurking Bifurcate Percolate Masquerade Masque Mosque Mosquito Askance Askew Muscat Abscond Sconce Scone Skewer Bulky Chalky Volcano Pumpkin Bumpkin Bodkin Vodka |
• Final K preceded by a consonant Mark Bark Stark Lark Embark Fork Stork Pork Dork Cork Bulk Sulk Catafalque Milk Silk Task Bask Mask Flask Dusk Bank Tank Rank Crank Stink |
Tongue twisters
I correctly recollect Rebecca MacGregor's reckoning.
Kris Kringle carefully crunched on candy canes.
Ken keeps Karen's kittens in the kitchen.
Cranky Christopher cracks crayons.
Quiet queen quilts quickly.
Captain Kangaroo's carefully crunching candy corn.
A cup of proper coffee in a copper coffee cup.
Quaint queens can't quarrel crazily.
Queenie is quite quiet, but quick-witted.
Casual clothes are provisional for trips across Asia.
Comical economists.
Craig Quinn's quick trip to Crabtree Creek.
Crisp crusts crackle crunchily.
Crush grapes, grapes crush, crush grapes.
Cuthbert's cufflink
Poetry
from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by George Gordon Byron
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
His steps are not upon thy paths,- thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,- thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: - there let him lay.