Efficacy of Intervention for a Bilingual Child Making Articulation and Phonological Errors

Abstract

This treatment case study presents a five-year-old bilingual Cantonese/English speaking boy with articulation and phonological errors. It reports two treatment phases: articulation therapy and phonological therapy. The articulation therapy was given in English and targeted the distorted production of / s/. The result was a perceptually acceptable pronunciation of / s/ in both English and Cantonese. The phonological therapy, also given in English, targeted cluster reduction, but it was only effective in treating English errors. The reduction of consonant clusters in Cantonese remained unchanged. These data have implications for two issues: the separateness of bilingual children's two phonological systems, and the differences between articulation and phonological errors.