Stutter course

This article describes the stutter speech course I run in Birmingham, England. The course helps people who stutter to overcome their stutter. The first two days of the course are where I describe the techniques which I used to overcome my own stutter. The first day is the most important day. This is the clients easy day, as I do most of the talking, explaining in detail around half of the speech rules required to beat the stutter. I ask the client to talk about their history, including information about how their stutter started, about their family and about their interests, plus any other information they would like to disclose, for example, where they work. The client will have at least one further speech task on this first day, which they will be asked to complete after they have heard the first set of rules. On the second day the client becomes more involved, starting to put into practice what they have learnt from the previous day. The final speech rules are taught on this day. The final three days are spent practising, enabling the rules to start becoming embedded and a natural part of the client's speech. Some of the areas included in the course are: 1.Why people stutter. 2.Telephone technique. 3.Interview technique. 4.Public speaking technique. 5.The speech rules: There are numerous speech rules covering all aspects of speech, I will briefly explain what three of them cover: a) When I had a stutter, I found it difficult to pronounce words beginning with certain letters such as b,d,g,k, and v etc. I would always be substituting words, for example, "Birmingham" to "West Midlands". These letters plus others are known as the "hard sounding" letters of the alphabet. I found the "soft sounding" letters (vowels plus the letter h) normally OK to say. Therefore I was trying to find a technique which would enable me to make hard sounds soft, I eventually found the answer and one of the speech rules covers this. b)I hated "blocking" when I had a stutter. One of the speech rules, when applied makes it impossible for the person who has a stutter to block. c)For most stutterer's their speech is at its most vulnerable when they are under pressure. I therefore have a speech rule dealing with this issue. 6.How to become fluent using the speech rules. 7.Understanding the psychological aspects of speech. There is nothing in the course for the client to fear or worry about. If there is an area of the course that they would rather not cover or do they simply do not do it. Each course is unique, as every stutterer is different; this is why courses are run on a one-to-one basis.