Easy Does It for Fluency—Intermediate is a structured fluency intervention program designed to help children who stutter develop smoother, more confident speech. This comprehensive resource provides speech-language pathologists, educators, and parents with research-based strategies and engaging activities to support fluency development in school-age children. The step-by-step approach helps children recognize and modify dysfluent speech patterns while building self-confidence in communication. Ideal for therapy sessions and home practice, this program fosters a positive and supportive environment for fluency improvement.
Three potential components of stuttering are addressed:
Motor – address rate control and continuous phonation; learn to use bouncing, sliding, easy onsets, and light contacts
Linguistic – activities emphasize language skills for problem solving, informing, conversation, and expressing feelings; length and complexity of response are factored in
Psychosocial – develop positive attitudes and reduce emotional reactions; desensitize to fluency disruptors
The program is organized around six levels of progress:
Getting Ready: The student is educated about the process and expectations for therapy and decides whether to make a commitment to the therapeutic process.
Analyzing: The student differentiates easy disfluencies from stuttering in his own speech.
Modifying Speech Production: The student produces easy speech using forward flowing speech and/or word initiation techniques like bouncing, sliding, light contacts, and easy onsets.
Desensitizing: Fluency disruptors are introduced and the student learns to tolerate them while continuing to use easy speech.
Transferring: The student gradually moves from the use of easy speech in the therapy room to spontaneous speech in real-life situation outside the therapy room. Activities move in a hierarchy from easier to more difficult settings. Response length and complexity gradually increase. Pragmatic functions such as informing, controlling, and expressing feelings are addressed.
Maintaining: Therapy is phased out by gradually decreasing direct contact with the student.
Features:
Targets intermediate-level fluency skills in school-age children.
Uses structured, research-based techniques to encourage smooth speech.
Incorporates gradual progression from basic to advanced fluency-building activities.
Includes guided exercises, worksheets, and visual supports.
Designed for use by speech-language pathologists in therapy sessions and adaptable for home practice.
Provides strategies for self-monitoring and confidence-building in everyday communication.
