What is fronting in speech therapy?

The sounds that should be made towards the BACK of the mouth, are instead made at the FRONT of the mouth.

Sounds that can be affected:

• c/k
• g
• sh

How do I know if my child has this pattern?

Because fronting is a pattern, once you know the pattern, it can be pretty easy to clue in to what your child says. Your child will swap or replace:

• the ‘g’ sound with the ‘d’ sound (go is said as dough, got is dot)
• the ‘c’ or ‘k’ sound with the ‘t’ sound (car is said as tar, come is tum)
• the ‘sh’ sound with the ‘s’ sound (she is said as see, shop is sop)

How do speech-language pathologists work on this pattern?

Minimal pairs is a therapy approach that is commonly used to treat fronting. Our activities involve showing your child word pairs containing both the word that they mean to say, and the word that they actually said.

Using the cards, we will ask your child to say each word pair. Sometimes, especially at the start of therapy, your child might look at both cards and say “tea-tea”, instead of “key-tea”. You might hear your therapist say, “Did you mean key or tea?”, while they hold up the card. We are helping your child to understand that they have to make a different sound, or else we don’t understand them, and it doesn’t make sense!

In the shop

Are you looking to educate and inform the families and teachers that you work with about their child’s phonological patterns? These easy-to-understand handouts EXPLAIN the speech patterns that their child is using. Get these handouts.

Do you need a set of bright, meaningful minimal pair cards to use for treating fronting? This set not only includes color and black & white cards, but visuals to help teach the concept that there are front sounds, and back sound. Purchase the Teach Phonology set.