Excerpt from Oral English Individual defects. What shall we do with speech defects, such as stuttering, lisping, nasality etc.? Until we get specialists in speech, not much; it is easily possible to do more harm than good; but we can do something. By a study of a few well - selected books, such as those in the list appended, the teacher may acquire a rudi mentary knowledge of the machinery of speech and the way it func tions in forming the elementary speech sounds. A little practice will enable her to determine the positions of her own speech organs by feeling and by observation before the mirror. By all means, if possible, she should go further and take special work in phonetics and speaking under competent teachers, but even with a study of her own she may be able to help most of the cases which come to her. Of course, where a specialist is available, she should place the pupil who needs help in his hands. Lacking such help, three courses are open to her. She may ignore the pupil's need, and leave the child doomed to isolation and stunted growth; she may help him through carefully directed imitation; or she may work improvement through correct understanding and manipulation of the organs of speech. A combination of the last two methods will often prove surprisingly effective. The commonest conspicuous peculiarities of speech are, too high or too low pitch, weak or whispering voices, muffled or closed voices, lisping, stuttering, nasality and dialect. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.