Long-Term articulation goals can help you stand out among your competitors. This is a challenging task, albeit not an impossible one. Setting your business up for success involves paying attention to factors like building a solid brand, managing your time effectively, implementing SEO, and using a creative marketing mix to promote your products or services. However, this is only half of the equation. To increase your likelihood of success, you also need to think outside the box and implement strategies that your competitors might have yet to consider.
Doing this can increase your business’s competitive edge, increase your customer base, and ultimately lead to more sales. This article will go over a strategy to help your business and employees grow and develop better ideas to bring to the creative table: setting long-term articulation goals. We will discuss the importance of setting measurable goals, utilizing visual prompts and cues, and tracking progress.
What is articulation?
Let’s start by defining what articulation is. Articulation is an essential aspect of spoken language and communication. It refers to being able to express thoughts or feelings in a coherent verbal form by using clear and distinct sounds when speaking out loud. Articulation refers to the ability to produce the sounds of a language in a way that listeners effectively understand. It includes producing the sounds correctly, in the right order, and with the proper emphasis.
Communication skills are fundamental for entrepreneurs and business owners. Mastering the art of communication can help build and maintain relationships with clients, employees, and investors. Polishing these skills can help them establish trust and rapport, which can lead to long-term business success. Being able to form long-lasting relationships is one of the reasons why we recommend working with U.S. Manufacturers when it comes to business models like drop shipping (more on that here).
Importance of articulation in business:
Articulation is a fundamental skill for businesses and life because it is critical for effective communication among individuals.
Speech goals should be set early during childhood to help individuals achieve their maximum potential, succeed in school and give them greater freedom and opportunity when selecting their career paths. Good articulation skills can also improve an individual’s confidence and self-esteem and diminish child struggles, which can benefit personal and professional contexts from early on. In a school setting, classroom teachers can play a vital role in identifying children needing speech therapy and referring them to a certified speech-language pathologist for an evaluation.
In a business environment, clear and precise communication is essential for expressing ideas, transmitting and conveying information, building relationships, and collaborating. Being able to articulate thoughts and ideas effectively and clearly is a fundamental skill for success in any field or profession. In leadership roles, effective articulation is essential because when you are in charge of leading a team, you need to communicate instructions and expectations in a clear way that is easy to understand.
How can articulation help your business?
Effective articulation will also help your business with the following:
- Negotiations and persuasion: Effective articulation and communication are essential when securing funding capital, closing deals, or convincing employees (or supervisors) to support a new initiative. Good communication skills will help your team members express themselves effectively and convince others to see things from their perspective.
- Marketing and advertising: Entrepreneurs and business owners need to convey the value of their products or services in a way that resonates with their target audience. If you are still struggling to define who your ideal customer is, you can find some practical questions to ask yourself here.
- Public speaking: Effective articulation and communication skills can help business owners and team members speak clearly, use effective body language, and reduce nervous habits.
- Leadership: Learning how to communicate their vision and goals effectively to their team and also be able to listen and respond to feedback is a must for entrepreneurs.
Articulation is particularly relevant when it comes to sales. Clearly articulating a product’s or service’s features and benefits is essential when closing new deals and renovating existing collaborations. In a manager, the ability to communicate instructions and expectations is crucial in leading a team.
What are long-term articulation goals?
Long-term articulation goals focus on the desired outcomes or objectives for speech and language development over an extended period. Setting long-term articulation goals for yourself, your business, and your staff can bring many benefits. Long Term articulation goals can help team members achieve optimal communication skills and success in their professional and daily lives. Focusing on achieving these goals can improve the following areas of your company:
- Increase clarity and intelligibility of speech.
- Increase vocabulary and language skills.
- Enhancing language use in meetings, project pitches, and feedback sessions.
- Improve specific speech sounds or structures that an individual may need to work on, such as reducing a lisp or improving the ability to produce certain sounds.
Why are long-term articulation goals important?
Setting long-term articulation goals will provide direction and a clear path for team members to follow in their speech and language development. Having a clear idea of the areas that need improvement will help the organization develop a roadmap and strategies that focus on progress over time. Focusing on functional communication and real-life situations is vital for the individual’s overall development and ability to function inside the company and in society.
Long-Term Articulation Goals consider the individual’s overall development. Instead of only focusing on speech and language, their objective is to also focus on cognitive, social, and emotional skills that are essential for the individual’s progress.
Set goals come hand in hand with a sense of purpose and motivation for the team to work on. It will give them something to strive for and help them maintain focus and engagement. One of the benefits of setting long-term specific goals is that they allow you to track progress over a more extended period of time, which can provide insight into the effectiveness of the methods used to improve articulation and help identify areas that may require additional focus.
When a company focuses on long-term goals versus short-term goals, it helps keep expectations realistic. There is a clear focus on what to achieve, which helps manage the expectations of supervisors, business owners, and stakeholders.
Improvements that come with long-term articulation goals:
Long-term articulation goals will help you achieve optimal communication skills. Some of the benefits that will come with achieving these goals are:
Clarity and intelligibility of speech: Team members who work on achieving long-term articulation goals will find that they have improved their speech’s clarity and intelligibility, making it easier for others to understand them.
Vocabulary and language skills: Setting long-term articulation goals will help individuals express themselves more effectively.
Social and academic success: Long-term articulation goals can help individuals develop the skills they need to communicate effectively in different settings, including school and work, which can set them up for social and academic success.
Confidence: Setting and achieving long-term articulation goals can help individuals increase their confidence in their communication skills, which can positively impact their overall well-being.
Professional Success: Good communication skills are essential for professional success, especially for entrepreneurs and business owners. Setting long-term articulation goals can help them develop the skills they need to communicate effectively with clients, employees, and investors.
Why set measurable long-term articulation goals?
One of the first steps in implementing any effective program is setting measurable goals and deadlines. Making sure goals are measurable is vital because this provides a straightforward way to track progress.
Setting specific, quantifiable goals makes it easy to measure the individual’s progress toward the overall objective. Setting measurable goals allows for regular progress evaluations and allows you to adjust the techniques or strategies used to achieve those goals as needed.
When goals are measurable, a sense of accountability is also established by seeing the progress (or lack of it) and taking action accordingly. Additionally, quantifiable goals provide a way to celebrate successes and acknowledge progress, which can motivate individuals and help maintain engagement throughout the process.
Furthermore, measurable goals communicate expectations with the individual, supervisor, and other stakeholders and ensure everyone is on the same page. If you share information with all the parties involved, it will be easier to achieve what you desire.
Resources for achieving long-term articulation goals:
Individuals and Professionals:
Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs): SLPs are professionals trained in assessing and treating speech, language, and communication disorders. They can provide therapy and guidance for achieving long-term articulation goals.
Social skills groups: Social skills groups provide opportunities for individuals to practice their language and communication skills in social contexts with their peers.
Parent and family education: Parent and family education can support the individual’s progress by providing guidance and strategies for working on articulation goals at home.
Activities and Devices:
Articulation Therapy: Articulation therapy is a specific type of speech therapy that focuses on improving the individual’s ability to produce particular sounds, words, or sentence structures. Therapy can include exercises and activities to practice the targeted sounds and words and strategies for generalizing the skills to real-life situations.
Speech Therapy Techniques: Several speech therapy techniques are effective in achieving long-term articulation goals, such as the Kaufman Speech Praxis Treatment (KSPT), the Speech Easy Device, the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT), and the Speech-Language Pathology Treatment for Apraxia of Speech (SLP-Apraxia).
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices: AAC devices help individuals who have difficulty speaking communicate through pictures, symbols, or text. These devices can support the individual in achieving their long-term articulation goals.
Speech and language activities: Speech and language activities such as reading, storytelling, and conversation can provide opportunities for individuals to practice their speech and language skills in a naturalistic setting.
Technology: there are many technological resources, such as mobile apps, websites, and computer programs, that can provide additional support and practice for the individual’s articulation goals.
How to achieve long-term articulation goals?
Identify specific speech sounds, words, or sentence structures that certain individuals may struggle with. For example, suppose the individual has difficulty with final consonants. In that case, some of the language goals could be to improve the production of final consonants in words or the final position of a sentence. You can achieve this by developing a structured activity to help the individual practice the specific sound that needs improving.
Utilizing Visual Prompts and Cues: Visual prompts and cues can be a beneficial way to help individuals improve their articulation skills. These can include using pictures or objects to represent words, verbal prompts, facial expressions, or body language to convey meaning, and providing verbal cues or prompts to guide the individual in producing a sound or word.
Tracking Progress: Data collection is a crucial component of an articulation program. Keeping track of the individual’s progress over time can help speech-language pathologists, and other professionals make informed decisions about therapy techniques and goals. One way to do this is by using an articulation goal tracker sheet to track progress for each goal over a specific period of time. It would be a great idea to create a PDF goal tracker sheet that can be downloaded and printed.
Early Intervention: Early intervention is critical when it comes to addressing speech errors. The earlier an individual receives speech therapy, the more likely they will make significant progress.
Structured Activities: Structured activities can be a valuable tool in helping individuals improve their articulation skills. These can include language tasks, such as answering questions or retelling a short story, or structured language activities, such as using carrier phrases or correct sentence structures. You can plan these activities in a small group or one-on-one setting.
Additional Resources:
Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation: The Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation (GFTA) is an assessment tool that can evaluate an individual’s articulation skills. This test can identify specific sounds or sound combinations that the individual struggles with. The results are later used to inform goal-writing and therapy techniques.
Executive Functioning: Executive functioning is a set of cognitive skills essential for successful communication, including planning, organizing, and problem-solving. Improving executive functioning can aid in the individual’s ability to understand and use language, as well as improve their ability to follow-up questions, engage in functional communication, and better understand their own social behavior.
Communication Goals: In addition to articulation goals, it is crucial to also focus on communication goals. Communication goals can include expressive language skills, such as using vocabulary words and prepositional phrases, and receptive language, such as understanding initial stories or sentences. You can set specific communication goals to fit your company’s needs, considering your industry, product and service offerings, and target audiences.
Smart Goals: Setting SMART goals is a valuable way to ensure that goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. A SMART goals format tracks progress and helps meet goals promptly.
Examples of Long-Term Articulation Goals to set:
Word level errors: A goal could be to improve the pronunciation of specific words, such as “Nuance” or “Ostracized” Using visual cues, such as pictures or objects, can be a helpful way for the individual to learn the correct production of words that are challenging to them.
Initial Syllables: Another area to focus on is initial syllables; they may be essential for individuals who struggle with early speech onset. A goal could be to improve the production of initial syllables, such as the /b/ sound in “book” or the /s/ sound in “sun.” You can do this through structured activities, such as repeating syllable combinations or using a communication device to support their initial speech.
Initial Words: Another area to focus on is initial words; they can be crucial for individuals struggling with fluency goals. A goal could be to improve the production of initial words, such as the word “the” or “is” in a sentence. You can achieve this through structured activities, such as repeating initial words in a sentence or using a communication device to support their initial speech.
Phonological Process of Final Consonant Deletion: One specific aspect of articulation you can address is final consonant deletion. Final consonant deletion is a phonological process that can be particularly challenging for some individuals. A goal could be to improve the production of final consonants, such as the /t/ sound in “cat” or the /k/ sound in “back.” You can tackle this through structured activities, such as repeating final consonant sounds or using a communication device to support their final speech.
Helpful resources:
Articulation Goal Tracker and Therapy Log: It is essential to keep track of progress over time. One way to do this is by using an articulation goal tracker sheet. In the corner of the articulation goal tracker, the SLP can indicate whether the student has met the goal, is making progress towards the goal, or if the goal needs to be revised. In addition to tracking progress on the articulation goal tracker sheet, it can be helpful for the SLP to keep an articulation therapy log. The log can include notes about the individual’s ability to produce specific sounds or words and therapy techniques used during each session.
Wrapping up:
Improving articulation skills is a challenging but achievable task. Allocating resources and time to this objective can bring enormous benefits to your organization and translate into a better work atmosphere and more sales over time. Although the steps to take might take time, and there may be a challenging way to achieve goals in a couple of days, working towards achieving your goals will reap great benefits.
The first step towards getting started is identifying the top areas where your organization or employees might need help and contacting a professional who can help you develop a strategy tailored to your needs.
Would you like to see the communication skills of your team improved? How will this benefit your company? After reading this article, will you consider setting long-term articulation goals for yourself or your staff members? Let us know what your thoughts are. We would love to connect.
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