Have a student on your caseload that is demonstrating difficulty producing the CH sound? Perhaps you're a parent whose child is in speech therapy working on the CH sound?

The CH sound can be a tricky sound to teach because it's hard to visualize what's going on inside the mouth when saying the sound. But no worries, here are some tips to help achieve that tricky CH sound. These tricks have helped several of my students produce the sound in no time! 

How To Produce CH

First let's begin by understanding how the sound is made. The CH sound is a palato-alveolar sound, WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN??? Simple, the CH sound is made when your tongue makes contact with the hard palate. To make the CH sound your tip of the tongue and blade of the tongue has to make contact with the alveolar ridge (bumpy part of your mouth) and the sides of the tongue come in contact with your upper molars in order to stop the airflow and make that sound nice and short. Also, it's important that your child or client knows that the lips must be rounded like an "O" to make the sound. 

Tip #1 

For smaller children, I like to refer to this sound as the "Chu-Chu" sound and imitate the sound a train makes. Children learn best through play therefore, I bring out all the toy trains and we imitate the sound as much as possible during the session. It also helps to have a visual for the child throughout the session so I use the train flashcard from my Bilingual Articulation CH Flashcard deck.

Tip #2

A lot of my students who are having difficulty saying the CH sound often substitute the sound for an SH sound. Therefore, we compare the two sounds by using a visual. On a sheet of paper, I draw a long line to represent SH because the airflow is long. Then I draw a short like for CH to show that the airflow and sound are short in length. It helps my student understand that the CH sound needs to be as short as possible. 

Tip #3

More visuals! I often explain to my students that CH is kind of like an SH but it's a very MAD and HARD SH. We practice saying the SH sound as HARD and as possible and then I cue the student to cut the airflow nice and short (usually by clapping my hands really quick).

Tip #4

A trick that has always helped achieve the CH sound is to practice saying a T sound followed by an SH sound several times. Start slow, and then go as fast as you can. Saying the 2 sounds REALLY fast makes the CH sound. Try it below! 

T-SH-T-SH-T-SH-T-SH-T-SH

Tip #5 

Lastly, I always recommend to PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! For my bilingual students, I always ensure that they can practice the sound in both languages; therefore, it's important to use cognate word pairs in my word selections to ensure carry-over into both languages. 

Practice words like: Churro/Churro, Nachos/Nachos, Chocolate/Chocolate

For more practice words make sure to check out my Bilingual Articulation CH Flashcards!