Speech therapy for phonological disorders with basis on stimulation of phonological awareness skills

Abstract

Objective: propose and apply a therapeutic approach for phonological disorders based on stimulation of phonological awareness skills and words with controlled phonological structure. Methods: three subjects with mildmoderate phonological disorder level participated in this study. They were first year students of Elementary School and they received therapy with basis on stimulation of phonological awareness skills. The considered phonological variables to select words to be part of the phonological awareness tasks were: word length, syllable structure and segmental properties. The analyzed results were pre and post phonological system therapy, phonological awareness and impact of phonological variables which were referred in two tasks, syllabic segmentation and segmental identification. The data were analyzed in qualitative way. Results: the number of segments in the phonological system of the three subjects increased and the phonological disorder severity decreased. The scores obtained for phonological awareness indicated improvement of this skill for all subjects. Word length and syllable structure caused impact on syllabic and segmental task resolution, respectively. Conclusion: the applied therapeutic approach caused phonological system reorganization in the three cases. The phonological structure of the words which comprise the phonological awareness tasks may have impact in the performance of the observed children, considering the proposed phonological awareness tasks.