About the presenter: Lynne Shields is a professor in the communication disorder and deaf education department at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she teaches courses in fluency disorders, language disorders, counseling and phonetics, and supervising in the university speech & language clinic. She is a board recognized specialist in fluency disorders. |
Stuttering surveys are often used as an activity in therapy, particularly with teens and adults, as a vehicle for desensitization. The person giving the survey most often introduces themselves as someone who stutters while stuttering openly, and then asks the informant questions such as whether they know people who stutter, what stuttering is, or what causes stuttering. This activity can be adapted to younger children quite successfully by gearing the survey to the child's interests and abilities. Children as young as kindergarten or first grade can have fun with this activity, and it can be used for several purposes. For children who seldom talk to others, a survey can be a way for them to simply begin talking to other people in a structured activity. If this is the purpose, then there is no need for them to do anything other than carry out a survey with other people of their own choosing, familiar or unfamiliar. A child who is sensitive about stuttering openly might be asked to consider putting voluntary stutters in their speech when they give a survey, or a child wanting to learn how to use one or more of their speech tools outside of therapy may find it easy to do while giving a survey. Whatever goal is chosen by the child and therapist, the child is put in charge of coming up with a survey topic, generating both the questions and the survey response forms, and selecting the audience to be given the survey.
Below are examples of survey activities that were designed by two of the children seen for therapy at our university clinic:
Each of these children had control over the survey from the planning through to reporting what was good or not good about the experience, and as a result, the experiences were perceived as being positive by both of them. If you have done surveys with younger children, I would like to hear about your experiences, or if any young readers want to share their thoughts on this activity, please post your comments.
SUBMITTED: July 29, 2011