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From: Thais M. Amaro
Date: 10/20/02
Time: 8:11:32 PM
Remote Name: 67.81.228.250
I have a friend who was born and raised in the United States and the only language spoken at home was Spanish. He told me that he received speech therapy in middle school because he was stuttering (in English). Because he didn’t want to go to the sessions at school the SLP persuaded him to provide the therapies at home. Currently, he expresses himself most of the time in English. Although he does not feel too comfortable speaking in Spanish he does use it when he is at home. I have noticed that when he speaks in English he does it very fast but with out articulation errors and not stuttering behaviors. However, when he speaks in Spanish (very rarely, he says it’s too hard for him) some "core" behaviors such as prolongations and blocks are evident. If the two languages were learned basically at the same time why he is stuttering in one language and not on the other? Can the strategies that he learned to become more fluent in English be used in the other language (in this case Spanish)?