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From: Sandra Merlo
Date: 19 Oct 2008
Time: 14:54:55 -0500
Remote Name: 201.43.64.84
Dear Hope, thank you for your questions. In covert stuttering, the person is trying to hide stuttered disfluencies through the constant use of reformulations. This can cause speech to be slower, with more pauses, with more common disfluencies, and more confusing (because the words substitutions are not always appropriate). But these symptoms can also be found in the speech of people without fluency problems. So I think the easiest way to distinguish both is through reading aloud. When a person with a covered stuttering is asked to read aloud, he/she can no longer reformulate and this task will probably reveal stuttered disfluencies. About the second question, I would say that a person can practice to be a more fluent speaker improving his/her vocabulary, improving his/her discourse abilities (descriptive, narrative, and argumentative skills), improving his/her grammatical skills, and speaking with a comfortable speech rate. Best regards, Sandra