Have you ever had a child who is fronting, and you are stuck trying to elicit a /k/ in isolation? Instead of trialling unsuccessful cues week after week, you could probe this sound in different words to give you a place to start for successful therapy!
This is where facilitative contexts come in! K Facilitative Contexts for Speech Therapy use carefully chosen words to promote a clearer/k/ sound production. These are described as the “best bets” words in which a child is more likely to produce the /k/ sound.
How do i figure out facilitative contexts?
The features of surrounding sounds (e.g., vowels and other consonants) help get the child’s articulators in the right position to produce /k/. It’s like finding the perfect puzzle piece to unlock their speech progress.
You have a few options:
- Look at a vowel quadrilateral – find vowels that can “get the tongue in a good spot” to encourage a /k/ and search for real words to try these out
- Look at a place-voice-manner chart (download our free one) and similar to the vowels, look for other consonants that share features similar to /k/ and probe those words in different positions
- If analyzing phonetic features and thinking up words is too overwhelming, use our Facilitative Contexts Screener for /k/.
Keep in mind – one facilitative context is not suitable for every child. By probing what works best for the child in front of you, you can start at the word level with words you know will facilitate a clear /k/ sound.
This also helps you skip (what can be a frustrating part of early therapy) trying to elicit the sound in isolation. The words you pick from the screener will help your child stabilize their /k/ production while feeling successful and building their confidence before moving on to traditional articulation or phonological interventions.
Our favorite facilitative context for "k"
My favorite context to try is words where /k/ is in the final position, following a low-back vowel. Why are we trialling FINAL position?
- We know that the front of the tongue needs to stay down low to say /k/, so using a low vowel “gets the tongue ready” and increases the chance of elevating the back of the tongue. Please know that you will likely have to provide instructions such as, “keep the front of your tongue down,” or you will model the slowly using a mirror to watch your tongue lift at the back.
Example words are: “yuck,” “whack,” and “knock.”
