Teaching ‘ER’ in Isolation & Syllables

LEARN 3 WAYS:  The lesson is provided in Video, Audio or Text format below.

In this lesson, you will be learning how to teach your child ‘ER’ in isolation, or all by itself.

ER is often one of the harder vocalic ‘R’s for kids to produce.    Most errors will sound like a distorted ‘aw’ or ‘oh’ sound.  For instance, ‘sister’ might sound like ‘sistaw’ or ‘sisto’.  The way to fix this involves proper tongue placement, holding the jaw still, and tightening up the muscles of the tongue.

There are 2 basic methods for producing the R sound.

The first way is the Retroflex method – or tongue curled back and up.

The second way is the Bunched method, or tongue bunched back against the molars.

Both methods can benefit from remembering the acronym ‘TUB’, standing for TIGHT, UP, and BACK.

Let’s discuss these in more detail.

RETROFLEX METHOD

The Retroflex method is generally easier to teach, so I usually try that first.  Tell your child to put the tip of his tongue to the center of the roof of his mouth.  Many people have a slight bump or ridge in the middle of the roof of their mouth, where the 2 sides of the palate join together.   If your child has one, it can be a great ‘landmark’ of sorts to help your child know where to put his tongue.

You can show him where to put it using a mirror or a mouth puppet like this.

Or you can use a tongue depressor or lollipop to touch the spot.  Something flavored can help kids to find the spot again by ‘taste’.  They even make flavored tongue depressors!  In my experience, grape is the most popular flavor.  😉.

So first show him where to put his tongue, and then let him try.  Using a mirror and a small flashlight can help.  If the tongue is curling up, you will be able to see the line of the frenulum on the bottom of it.  The frenulum is the membrane that anchors the tongue to the mouth.  When a person produces retroflex ‘R’, you can generally see that frenulum as the tongue curls back.  Try it yourself as you make the ‘ER’ sound.  If you don’t see it, then you are probably producing the Bunched ‘R’, which is the second method to make vocalic R.

Back to the Retroflex method.  Once your child has the tongue in the right spot, have him vocalize while holding the tongue up there.  His instinct will be to drop the tongue down and say ‘ah’.  Tell him to keep it up there, touching the roof of the mouth, even if it feels slightly unnatural.  The next trick is crucial.  He needs to tighten up the sides of his mouth and tongue.  Notice what happens when he does this – his tongue will drop slightly so that it is still up there but not making complete contact with the roof of his mouth anymore. But tell him not to try to move it down; it will just happen naturally.  If he moves it down on purpose, he probably won’t make a good ‘ER’ sound.  Just tell him to squeeze the sides of his mouth and the sides of his tongue.  If he looks in the mirror as he does this, he may see his mouth make a SQUARE pucker.  This is ok for the retroflex ‘R’ sound.  But don’t make it a ROUND PUCKER.  I know this can be confusing, because obviously anything you try to do with your mouth is not a true square.  But notice the difference between when you make the ‘SHhhhh’ sound and when you make a ‘W’ with a ‘Wo’ sound.  The ‘Shhhh’ sound should make your lips into more of an oval or square.  That is similar to what will be happening with a Retroflex R sound, only with ‘R’, your tongue will be Tight, Up, and Back – TUB!   That is an acronym that you can use for both methods of vocalic R production.

Practice having him put his tongue in the right spot, and squeezing slightly while vocalizing to make the ‘ER’ sound.  He probably won’t get it right away.  Once he has the idea, though, have him try slight variations of tongue placement.  Tell him to try putting the tongue a little bit in front of the bump this time, or a little bit in back of the tongue.  (If there is no bump, just ask him to put it a tiny bit forward or a tiny bit behind the middle of the roof of the mouth.)  If any change in position starts to sound more like a good ‘ER’ sound, encourage your child and tell him it was close!  Ask him to tell you what he did that made it sound better.  It’s important for your child to pay attention to what they are actually doing that made the sound, so that they can recreate it again.  If they can tell you what they did, that’s a good sign.

 BUNCHING METHOD

Now let’s talk about the second method, Bunching.   In that method, the tongue goes straight back in the mouth rather than curling up and back.  It sort of squishes back into itself and becomes wide and flat, with the sides of the tongue squeezing against the back teeth. The body of the tongue is up higher than normal, and back farther than normal, and ‘bunched’ tight.  So again, Tight, Up, and Back – ‘TUB’, just like before.   I personally cannot produce ‘R’ this way, so I have to rely on Mr. Mouth to demonstrate.

When you are teaching your child, tell him to imagine that his tongue is a bridge, connecting one side of his back teeth to the other.  Indiana Jones, or the latest superhero, must get from one side to the other without falling down.  Your child must squeeze tight to connect both sides with his tongue so the hero won’t fall.  He does this at the same time as he vocalizes, trying to produce the ‘ER’ sound.

You can use a tongue depressor or lollipop to touch the insides of the back teeth, showing him where to squeeze.  You can also touch the outsides of his jaws, where his teeth are.

Then have him put his fingers there on his cheek/jaw area to feel it tighten up when he squeezes his tongue up against his teeth from the inside.  It can help to have him start with the ‘EEEEE’ sound to get his tongue up and back, and then tell him to bunch it back farther for the ‘ER’ sound – ‘EEE-ERRRRRRR’.

For both methods, Retroflex and Bunched, you want to make sure the child is keeping his jaw relatively still when making ‘ER’, and not moving his mouth open too much.  I tell my students to imagine if someone tells a ‘Dad joke’ that is kinda funny but not really, and you are just politely laughing with your mouth only partly open, ‘heh, heh, heh’.  That’s about how far open you want your teeth and mouth to be when producing the vocalic R sound.

Don’t be discouraged if it takes a while for your child to produce ‘ER’ correctly.  Some children pick it up right away, but for most, it can take weeks or months.  The more your child practices, and the younger he is, the faster it will probably be. The exception is very young children — they may not yet have the motor control skills to manipulate their tongue effectively, or the language comprehension skills to understand what you are asking them to do.  But by late preschool or kindergarten, most children will be able to understand you well enough to work on R.  If you want to mix it up with other sounds you are working on, that can help keep your child’s attention.   Also, as you are speaking, you can emphasize correct ER sounds in words, i.e., “What did you learn from your Teach-ER today?”   or “There is a blue BIRD.”  Remember, not all ‘ER’ words are spelled with ‘ER’!  That can be confusing for some kids who can read.  They may see the word ‘WORD’ and think that it is pronounced with an ‘OR’ kind of sound.  It helps to go over that with older children who are readers.

Sometimes children can produce other types of vocalic ‘R’ easier than they can produce ‘ER’.  For instance, I’ve had success starting with ‘AR’, as in ‘car’.  I will go over these other types of vocalic ‘R’ in future lessons.

When your child can produce ‘ER’ in isolation with 80% accuracy, you can start on syllables, like ‘ERS, ERD, ERB, ERF, and ERG’.  For example, for ‘ERS’, instruct your child to get a good ‘ER’ FIRST and then move the tongue up behind the teeth to make the final ‘S’ sound.  It might help to use a mirror in front of both of you, or to at least give your child a hand mirror to look at.  Try to make it fun and reward your child for any effort to produce the sound correctly. It can help to separate the ‘ER’ and the final consant for a bit, and then gradually say them closer together until he gets it:  ER—s, ER—s, ERs.   Practice this at least 3 times.

Then you can move on to the next syllable, ‘ERD’ and do the same thing.  You may find that some syllables will be easier for your child to produce, and that’s ok.  You can come back to the harder ones later.

Move on to as many syllables as you can, trying to get as many correct productions as possible.  If your child gets discouraged, switch to a different activity, like trying to name as many items in the room that begin with ‘ER’ as possible.  You could also read a storybook that has a lot of ‘ER’ words in it.

When your child can produce ‘ER’ syllables correctly 80% of the time, you can move on to Initial ‘ER’ in words.  From there, continue to work your way through all the ‘ER’ levels, as outlined in the How to Teach Your Child Speech course.

You’ve got this!