"Makes Me Want to Sing"

http://www.smartspeechtherapy.com/guest-post-makes-me-want-to-sing-improving-your-childs-speech-and-language-skills-through-music/

I found this article to be extremely interesting and very beneficial to my 20% project. This blog post from Smart Speech Therapy LLC describes the correlation between children and singing. It discusses the positive benefits of verbal practice on speech therapy from when a child sings. The act of imitation and repetition helps children to develop their speech skills. Through trial and error, therapists have become able to adjust their methods to help each child individual with their speech through music.

The author gives many tips on how to ensure success through music in speech therapy. Singing whatever your child can already say helps them to learn pronunciation and letter sounds. Singing about what the child loves and repeating it can also help them to increase their speech skills. When they are interested in the topic, they learn the best. By repeating the song, the child is more likely to participate in singing along and learning. They also love singing songs in repetition like "your turn, my turn" so they learn phrases and lines. They are directly imitating what is being said, and in return becoming better speakers.

I found this post to be very helpful to my 20% project. It truly takes my topic and gives direct ways of how singing benefits children. I would like to further this exploration by looking at how it affects adults in need of speech pathology.

What impacts does singing have on speech therapy?

I was blessed with a passion for music since the day I was born. My dad introduced me to his favorite bands and would play them on repeat while I was strapped into my car seat as a child. Now, I have developed my own love for music. I started singing when I was 11 in my middle school choir. My love for singing grew as I entered high school and fell head over heels in love with the beauty of song. I have stopped singing since I arrived at the University of Georgia, but my obsession with music has never ended.

When I was deciding what major to pursue in college, I originally put Social Studies Education. During my senior year, I interned at my middle school with my favorite teacher. I quickly realized that middle school education was not for me. Working as an unpaid intern for 3 hours a day (when the requirement was only 5 per week), I was exhausted and turned off. My mom is an occupational therapist and advised me to look at speech therapy, or more formally, Communication Sciences and Disorders. She knows about my love for music and told me that I could really incorporate my love for music into my major. 

As a freshman, I have not yet been able to fully see what my major has to offer. Through the 20% project, I will be able to see how I can truly incorporate my passion for singing into my future job hopes. Many doctors have seen a correlation between simple melodies and songs with communication and speech. This is mainly seen in stroke patients. This is known as melodic intonation therapy.

I am excited to learn more about this topic and explore how singing and music impact speech pathology.