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From: Katie Harke, Graduate Student
Date: 18 Oct 2006
Time: 17:00:50 -0500
Remote Name: 71.90.83.209
Hi, I wanted to start out by saying I found your article extremely inspiring and fascinating. I am a graduate student in speech-language pathology and am taking my first fluency class. Though I do not personally stutter, I have had personal experience with stuttering; my brother has struggled with stuttering his entire life. Though he has gone to speech therapy, he continues to struggle with disfluency. I believe there are many times he uses technologies (such as text messaging) as a “crutch.” I thought you had tremendous insight into both the positive and negative aspects of technology. First, what finally made you decide to stop using the Edinburgh Masker? You had relied on it for so long, was it an abrupt decision or did you wrestle with it? I am also curious as to if you had seen speech pathologists and if any aspects of therapy had helped. Also, as a future speech-pathologist, I was interested in what you believe is an effective way to assist people who stutter, especially individuals who use technology as a crutch?