Acoustic Highlighting is an added vocal emphasis on an identified target. A target can be important sounds, words, parts of phrases, or grammatical structures in a sentence (Fickenscher, S., & Gaffney, E. (2016). Auditory verbal strategies to build listening and spoken language skills. Retrieved from http://www.auditory-verbal-mentoring.com/contact/contact.php) *can also be retrieved from these website using the navigation at the top of the page*

Why do we need to create an emphasis or highlight a word, sound, or phrase? Well, there are a few reasons, depending on the language needs of the child/person.

In the early stages of listening skill development, acoustic highlighting is used to highlight a new or important word that has been said.
As listening skills develop, acoustic highlighting can be used to correct a sound or word that is omitted or said incorrectly (Simser, 1993).

There are a few ways you can create Acoustic Highlighting:

speak the target with more emphasis, increase the intensity
- Child: “He eat all /l/ogurt.”
- Adult: “Yes, he ATE all his /y/ogurt.”
- Emphasizing only ATE by saying it slightly louder (not shouting) to bring attention to the difference in tense. The model corrects the substitution for yogurt but, as it is age appropriate, it does not need to be emphasized at this time.
pause slightly before saying the target
- I find that I pause for a beat before and after the target. I find that it gives me a moment to make eye contact to ensure that my target was understood before proceeding.
whisper the target, decrease the intensity (this can be considered it’s own strategy)
- decreasing the volume can help bring attention to sounds like /s/ that are more clear when the intensity is lowered.
- Child: “Turtle low”
- Adult: “The turtle is /sss/low and the rabbit is fast.”
- This example also includes the next technique, increasing duration.
increase the duration of a target
change vocal intonation or pitch
- I would tend to pair this with the first technique of increasing intensity.
- Child: “what you name.” (no change in intonation)
- Adult models: “What is your name?” rising intonation and intensity on the final word

Once the child can hear and identify the targeted word, it is important for the adult to say the sentence with natural rhythm and intonation (prosody). Sometimes, acoustic highlighting can lead to a pattern of speech that does not always sound natural. At times it can sound like we are emphasizing every other word. The listener can become confused about what point we are trying to make or what they would be listening to. Therefore, it is important to remember to repeat the sentence with normal prosody once the child has picked up the target word in their repetition of the adult’s model (Luterman, 1999).

This strategy can be used in almost any activity. In thinking about reading instruction, this strategy becomes helpful with multi-syllable words or multiple meaning words that change meaning when the emphasis/accent changes. I’d love to see comments about successes and struggles in this area.

As always, you can download the entire Auditory Verbal Strategy resource via the link at the top of the page and the individual handout by clicking here!