Wednesday 20 May 2009

Speak Easy

I have a new on-screen keyboard I am trying out, it has lots of fancy predictive text facilities that should, in theory, speed up my typing. I can but give it a go.

Yesterday I was visited by a speech therapist who came to remind me how to talk, which was very useful because it is the kind of thing I might forget left to myself. Apparently I have a tendency to Dysarthria, which means slurred speech, something I used to achieve with a bottle or two of wine but now comes naturally. Who says I'm not making some progress. She asked me it I wanted to consider using a voice amplifier. This would mean wearing a head microphone and a small speaker but would make shouting at the kids easier. The problem, as I see it, is that the small speaker looks as though it was designed circa 1979 in beige plastic, and lacks even a retro nostalgia. Imagine an ipod speaker designed by Tupperware.

The speech therapist gave me a helpful advise sheet which includes useful suggestions such as “ Do not carry on talking when your breath has run out. Stop, breathe in and carry on.“ I think you will agree that that is very sensible and I will seek to do just that.

Until next time... Breathe in, breathe out.

4 comments:

  1. CAN you actually talk when you've run out of breathe? I thought that the whole speech thing was the result of air passing over the vocal chords producing a sound? Or maybe I was misinformed when I took Physics back in school? (and I did take it at A-level, so I think they would probably have been teaching the truth by that stage!) Or maybe things have changed since my day and there is now a new way of talking without air flow, they are always developing new techniques, after all!

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  2. If you are looking for a more retro / cool speaker for the voice amplification system, Rock God has just bought a 4 x 12" Marshall cab. I am sure he would let you borrow it from time to time to shout at the kids?

    Happy breathing...

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  3. Could I introduce your speech therapist to my wife........Don't tell her I said that!

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  4. You have been tagged!
    http://onesickmother.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/05/tagged-six-unimportant-things.html

    ReplyDelete

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