City Lit speech therapy course.

[Mr Fingers]

Following on from Lemon's thread, has anyone tried the City Lit speech course? it sounds very intensive as it's quite long.
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/7748/2282088722c9c949e0b5sw8.jpg

[Roley]

I've never heard of it. Where can we get more information? Your link took me to a picture of a religious image on a wall light switch.

[Mr Fingers]

Lol, sorry about that. I was posting that image on another forum. Must of gotten mixed up.:D
Here's the link thanks to Lemon;

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2255690,00.html
http://www.citylit.ac.uk/news.php?shownews=true&newsid=163
http://www.citylit.ac.uk/coursedetail.php?course=Block+modification%3A+2+we eks+and+3+days+%28speech+therapy%29

[peapod]

i went on this course about 7 years ago (but 1 evening a week, spread over several months). one of the different things [as i remember] is, rather than ing to stop your stammer, they try to turn you from having 'hard blocks' [facial tics, spasms, going red in the face, etc] to a 'soft stammer' - you might repeat a syllable a few times before it comes out, but you feel more calm and relaxed thoughout the repetition, and you're back into smooth speech when you finish the repetition, instead of finishing one 'hard block' and going straight into another one.

once you've had a few 'soft stammers' and think 'that's not *too* bad' [and other people don't react as badly either], then your fear and anxiety gets lower, which helps reduce the stammer.

if it can get to the point where you think 'well, if i am going to stammer, it will only be a soft stammer, so who really cares anyway', then at that point, a huge amount of the anxiety is gone.

i guess the soft stammering is what they mean when they say "Speech work: this is ed at helping you change your stammering towards an easier, more fluent pattern of speech."

seven years on, it never completely goes away but things are much better and i absolutely think it's worth it. the key thing is, it makes you happier to live with your stammer, and if you stop caring about it in the majority of situations, you'll end up more fluent and more confident.

i also went on another course they do - a speaking circle for people who stammer - where you take turns giving a short presentation to the rest of the group [who are also stammerers] and that's good too.

[Mr Fingers]

i went on this course about 7 years ago (but 1 evening a week, spread over several months). one of the different things [as i remember] is, rather than ing to stop your stammer, they try to turn you from having 'hard blocks' [facial tics, spasms, going red in the face, etc] to a 'soft stammer' - you might repeat a syllable a few times before it comes out, but you feel more calm and relaxed thoughout the repetition, and you're back into smooth speech when you finish the repetition, instead of finishing one 'hard block' and going straight into another one.

once you've had a few 'soft stammers' and think 'that's not *too* bad' [and other people don't react as badly either], then your fear and anxiety gets lower, which helps reduce the stammer.

if it can get to the point where you think 'well, if i am going to stammer, it will only be a soft stammer, so who really cares anyway', then at that point, a huge amount of the anxiety is gone.

i guess the soft stammering is what they mean when they say "Speech work: this is ed at helping you change your stammering towards an easier, more fluent pattern of speech."

seven years on, it never completely goes away but things are much better and i absolutely think it's worth it. the key thing is, it makes you happier to live with your stammer, and if you stop caring about it in the majority of situations, you'll end up more fluent and more confident.

i also went on another course they do - a speaking circle for people who stammer - where you take turns giving a short presentation to the rest of the group [who are also stammerers] and that's good too.

Thanks Peapod (cool name :P) i'm glad it was positive for you, it does make sense that this course doesn't to get you to talk fluently like most, perhaps that's asking too much for someone with a stammer? From what you've said it sounds more controlled & i think that's something that's perfect for me.

I've done the Starfish course (similar to Mcguire's) & they didn't concentrate enough with the emotional side of things so i was still getting all the emotions that i had before. & the breathing technique is questionable.

I'll be finding out more about this City Lit course so thanks for the info.