10 Teaching /ɹ/ with the Tiger Growl Cue
Linsey Bledsoe
Guided Practice Script
Let’s practice the /ɹ/ sound. You can hear the /ɹ/ sound at the beginning of the word rake and at the end of the word pour. Can you say rake with me? Now let’s say pour. Good job! [1]
To produce the /ɹ/ sound, you raise the base of your tongue towards the top of your mouth, point the tip your tongue towards your lower teeth, and position your tongue to where you can feel the inside of teeth on both sides of your tongue. [2]
To practice producing the /ɹ/ sound correctly, let’s play a game! Let’s pretend that we are tigers in the jungle. Can you growl like a tiger? Let’s try it! Grrr, grrr, grrr! Now we’re practicing our tiger sound! [3]
Target Techniques and Considerations
Elicitation Techniques in the Script
- Modeling
- Phonetic placement
- Verbal instructions using a metaphor
Common /ɹ/ Sound Errors
- The sound /w/ is usually substituted for the sound /ɹ/.
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- Likely Cause: The substitution of /w/ for /ɹ/ is part of a process called gliding, in which children replace liquids like /ɹ/ and /l/ with glides like /w/ and /j/. This is because it is difficult for children to make the tongue positions that are required to make the sounds /l/ and /ɹ/.
Accent or Dialect Variation
- Most Spanish speakers produce a trilled r, in which they roll their r’s and produce the sound by touching their tongue tip right behind their teeth. The Cockney English dialect also adds the /ɹ/ to the end of words that end in a vowel sound when the next word in the sentence begins with a vowel sound. For example, a person of this dialect might say “I saw(r) it” instead of “I saw it.”
Source
How to speak cockney like a local. Cockney Accent. (2025a, August 15). https://cockneyaccent.com/articles/how-to-speak-cockney-accent-2/
