Clear Speech Works Teacher's Edition

Probe Quizzes

The Probe Quizzes are designed to provide periodic evaluation of client progress on specfic targets.

There are two pop-up buttons of the Probe Quiz screen. Choose the general category (the Type button: Stop Consonants, Fricatives, Affricates, Nasals, Liquids, Glides, Front Vowels, Central Vowels, Back Vowels or Diphthongs) from the top-most pop-up button. Then select the specific sub-category from the bottom pop-up button (the Target button). The program then randomly displays a list of 10 words containing the target phoneme.

There are no recording facilities provided with the Probe Quiz. These are not to be practiced. Simply have your client pronounce the word and then you immediately judge whether the pronunciation was acceptable and mark it with a check or an 'x'.

The test is complete when the client have finished all 10 words and you have evaluated them. Click on the Save Score button to save the results for later importation in the Clinician program.

Diagnostic Tests

The Diagnostic Test is designed to provide an indication of which Speech Works Units will be most useful for a particular client. It is not intented to provide a complete diagnosis of a client's accent. It can effectively be used in a pre-post demonstration of the progress a client has made.

The Diagnostic Test consists of 21 words. There are no model recordings for these words. The client makes a recording of each word. It is not necessary to play back each recording and, in fact, the user should not try to improve the pronunciation of the words with repeated recording. However, if a mistake has been made or there was a problem with the recording, it can be corrected.

Scoring of the Diagnostic Test can be done immediately or later from the Clinician program. Click on the Score button and a new screen is displayed. On this screen certain sections of the words are underlined. The sections may include a single sound or several sounds. Each underlined section should be evaluated separately. Listen to the word and judge if the section is pronounced acceptably.

When the evaluation is completed, the program will generate a lesson plan for the client and, if desired, the results can be imported the Clinician program and stored with other client data.

Tracking is designed for clinicians who work one-on-one with their clients. It generates records that can be used in reports on client progress. Here's how tracking works.

Image that a client is using the word pair exercise in Unit 9 Part A which contrasts initial 'l' with 'r' where the 'r' is the target. The client get the 'r' correct on the first try for 3 of the five pairs and is able to correct one of the remianing pairs spontaneously when he hears his incorrect version but bever is able to produce the 'r' correctly for the remianing pair. Clients often get 100% correct on a drill after practice. These numbers were chosen only to illustrate the process of tracking.

On January 16, 1993 the author pretended the client performed as described above. She hit a total of seven key strokes and the program automatically recorded and saved the following text:

	Initially Correct	Finally Correct	Spon. Corrs.
1/16/93 Words beginning with 'r'	60	80	1

Clinician/Instructor Program

The Clinician/Instructor Program allows you to keep general information, probe quiz results, diagnostic test results, tracking results and progress evluation data for each of your clients in a single location. You can then organize this data into any of the diverse types of reports you may need and save them to disk or print them out.

Each client has his or her own Client Information Card. There are 10 different categories in which client information is saved:

• Client Info
  Client's address, phone number, native language and training period.
• Background
  Client History including experience speaking and using English.
•  Goals
  The client's own stated goals or explicit goals you have identified as part of your training plan.
• Progress
  Notes on intermediate progress and/or summary statements at the end of a training period.
• Observations
  Notes taken during training, often informally written, that can be used in refining goals or giving detail to summary progress reports or final recommendations.
• Diagnostic Tests
  The results of evaluation of diagonstic test showing targets that have been identified as needing work.
  

This program also offers a powerful set of tools for quickly and easily creating a variety of standard reports. Each report can contain any of the information in any of the 10 categories in whatever order you wish.

If you frequently need certain types of reports, you can define and save templates for each and thus create the report for each client with only a few button clicks.

Personal Practice Files

The Personal Practice program offers an excellent opportunity to extend therapy beyond the confines of your office and allows you to zero in on words and phrases your clients find especially troublesome.

You can easy create Target-Specific Personal Practice files. You simply indicate to the program which target phoneme you are interested in and the program randomly selects 5 words, 5 phrases and 5 sentneces containing the targets and copies the model recordings for each from the Speech Works CD.

In addition, you can create Client -Specific Personal Practice files by simply entering the words, phrases or sentence your client finds particularly difficult and then record yourself as the model for each.

The Personal Practice program employs the same listen-record-compare methodology used throughout Speech Works. And, the Personal Practice program can be used by your clients independently of Speech Works.

Here are some of the many features of Version 3.0

Male and female Model Voices
Automatic Lesson Plans for 30 Foreign Languages and 14 English Dialects
On-Screen Multi-Media Help
Facial Close-Ups and X-Ray Tracings

If you have a question about an exercise, click on the Help (?, top right) button. The pop-up button in the Help dialog box offers different types of Help. For example, on this screen there is information on:

Pronouncing the 't' Sound
Cross Section: The 't' Sound diagram
Cross Section: Parts of the Mouth diagram
How to Use the Discriminating Sounds Drills.

Related link: Speech Works Personal

System Requirements:
Windows 95 or later
Macintosh OS 7.0 or later