By Smarty Ears Bilingual Speech Therapy Teletherapy Webinars June 23, 2022

Supporting Emerging Bilingual Students with Speech Therapy Technologies

Did you know that English is the language spoken in only 78% of houses in the United States? Source: Wikipedia.com This means that in 22% of households in the United States, a language other than English is spoken. Hispanics are the largest growing minority in the US.

Spanish-English dual language learners are the largest growing population of concern, with 33% of young elementary children speaking Spanish at home.

Meanwhile, according to the American Speech Hearing Association, there are only 10,208 certified bilingual service providers the United States.

The number of Speech-Language Pathologists who speak a language other than English is not the only barrier that Emerging Bilinguals with a speech-impairment face. There is an overall lack of materials for learning vocabulary and bilingual speech therapy resources in languages other than English. One company is dedicated to bridging that gap!

Smarty Ears has always been committed to providing resources for educators who support emerging bilingual students. Our technology has always been used by both special education professionals who speak a language other than English, as well as by professionals who don’t necessarily speak the language of the student they are providing services to.

Given the fact that Smarty Ears was founded by an immigrant, linguistic accessibility is part of Smarty Ears’ commitment.

Smarty Ears released FonoLogico, an articulation app that can be used for speech-impairment. Fonologico is Available on the App Store.

Fono Lógico (previously Spanish Artik) provides over 450 carefully selected images to help Spanish speaking children practice their sounds. Many children with difficulties pronouncing a sound would benefit from using this app.

Fono Lógico Pro includes all consonants in the Spanish language! Bilingual Speech Therapists and parents are able to select the specific sound they would like to work on, record student’s voices, and save data over time. Fono Lógico is a valuable tool for Speech therapists and parents.It provides accuracy scores for each practice session and allows you to save it for you over time. Fono Lógico also displays which specific sounds/words were not produced correctly – this is a great way to prepare homework assignments.

Checkout Speech and Language Academy for Bilingual Therapy Education:

If instead of purchasing individual apps for iPad, educators would rather access several activities for a variety of speech, language and communication goals, they can get access to an all inclusive platform called Speech and Language Academy by Smarty Ears.

Speech and Language Academy includes resources in nine languages including: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hindi, French and German.

This ever growing library of digital and dynamic games can be used by special education to support language learners and special education students in bilingual speech therapy.

Watch Michelle Posner, a Bilingual SLP showcase how she uses SLA with her emerging Bilingual Students:

For the past 16 years, Michelle Posner, a practicing Bilingual SLP, has heard and championed the need for more bilingual SLPs. Although she acknowledges its importance, her predominant focus resides in finding ways to help monolinguals become more comfortable working with bilingual students, due to the communication and cultural barriers. Watch her present on how she uses Speech and Language Academy with her students: