Developing Speech and Language Skills - Noel's ESL eBook Library

14 ‘s’ cluster reduction 141Problems with production of ‘s’ when it occurs in sequences ofother consonants at the beginnings and ends of wordsIn this chapter the focus is on helping children to produce ‘s’ when it is followed byother consonants at the beginnings of words, such as in words like ‘sweep’, ‘stone’ and‘scream’, and at the ends of words, such as in words like ‘desk’, ‘wasp’ and ‘post’.Before proceeding with work on this speech pattern, check whether the child canproduce ‘s’ at the ends of words (like miss and house). If not, it is useful to work onthis first. If the child misses off the ‘s’ so ‘house’ sounds like ‘how’, refer to Chapter 9,‘Final consonant deletion’. If ‘house’ sounds like ‘hout’ refer to Chapter 7, ‘Stopping’.DefinitionIn speech production the term ‘cluster’ refers to two or more consonants, which occurin sequence within a syllable. In this chapter the sequence is ‘s’ followed by anotherconsonant, i.e. ‘sm’, ‘sn’, ‘sp’, ‘st’, ‘sk’, ‘sl’ and ‘sw’.Children who demonstrate ‘s’ cluster reduction miss one of these consonants in thesequence. The sound they omit is usually the more difficult one, in this case the ‘s’.Examples of how a child might say a word are listed in column two of Table 14.1.However, sometimes there is a different pattern where the ‘s’ sound is retained and theother consonant is apparently missed out. Examples are provided in column three ofTable 14.1.Development of ‘s’ clustersMost four-year-olds are beginning to get the hang of ‘s’ clusters, especially at the ends ofwords (‘list’, ‘desk’), but they are usually among the more difficult classes of soundsequences to master, and children may not say them all right, particularly those withthree consonants like ‘spl’ and ‘str’, until they are five years old.