3 /S/ Sound Articulation Epiphanies To Make Teaching Easier

One of the great things about being an SLP is that we’re always learning. We have to! And yes, it’s also a downfall. In this blog post, I’m sharing three /S/ sound articulation epiphanies I’ve had recently about how I teach the sound…and how I’ve been doing it wrong!

/S/ Sound Articulation Epiphanies

I’ve never been more excited to share something speech related in my life! These S sound articulation epiphanies have literally changed the way I teach and help my students learn!

Epiphany #1: Stop Telling kids to put their tongues behind their teeth.

For kids who are already prone to putting their tongue THROUGH their teeth, telling them to put it behind their teeth often just results in the same incorrect forward movement, but now they put it against their teeth.

In reality, I want their tongue not to touch their teeth at all (at least not in the front). I don’t want the movement to be a forward thrust at all (even if it’s not sticking through the teeth).

So, I’ve started telling them to pull their tongue away from their teeth. This prompts them to create a totally different movement pattern and gets rid of those s sounds that look okay but still sound a little off.

s sound articulation- an x next to put your tongue behind your teeth and a checkmark next to pull your tongue away from your teeth.

Epiphany #2: Sound contrasts happen on a continuum.

Placement (not to mention manner and voicing) isn’t a binary thing. Coarticulation, individual differences, and a whole lot of other things mean that our sounds happen on a continuum. Sure, there are some sounds we could identify as a clear /th/ in isolation, and others we could say for sure are am /s/, but there’s also a lot in between.

At ASHA this year (2022), I was reminded that for many of our speech kids, the contrast between phonemes is collapsed.

s sound articulation a picture of a tongue between the letters "s" and "th"

What does this mean? We need to target BOTH sounds (think minimal pairs) to help them learn to differentiate. So, for my kids who have interdental distortions on /s/? The ones that I used to try to avoid TH words with? I make sure i include TH words so they can work on the distinction and the contrast.

You can read more from the speakers of the ASHA talk I mentioned here.

Epiphany #3: Stop focusing too much on the tongue tip.

We’re working so hard on pulling that tongue back, and sometimes I’ve used the T to S trick*, which is inherently tongue-tip-focused, I find that students still sometimes have trouble creating the right tongue shape for s.

In reality, /s/ is made with contact between the sides of the tongue and the upper teeth. A narrow space is open at the front for air to flow through. The sides are the key here! But we’re constantly talking about what to do in the front.

We don’t give prompts for any other sound this way (or at least I don’t). When we talk about the /l/ or the /f/ sound, we talk about the correct contact. So why are we so focused on only the airflow and not the correct contact for /s/?

I’ve really started focusing less on the tongue-tip position for /s/, which goes back to point number one about “pulling the tongue away from the teeth” rather than “put your tongue tip here….” and both together have made a huge difference.

*The T to S trick is having them tap out a /t/ sound, then holding it and slowly releasing air through the front.

Wrapping Up My /S/ Sound Articulation Epiphanies

There you have it, my /s/ sound articulation epiphanies, I am always looking to learn new things, and I thought for sure you all would love them! Hopefully, they will make teaching the /s/ sound easier for you!