I guess this post is really aimed at those hearing individuals who are learning to cue, or who’ve learned to cue, in order to support someone who is either hearing impaired or using cued speech for other educational reasons. I want to talk about finding creative ways to practice and improve your cueing skills. I can relate some of the ideas which have worked for me, but I’d be interested to learn what has worked for others as well. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, when I started learning to cue I had to begin to think of the sounds I made when I spoke, as opposed to the actual letters. For me, this took a lot of practice. I’d completed the beginning class and understood how the mechanics worked, but I knew I needed to get faster and more fluent. Some people like to work from rhyming books such as Dr. Seuss books. I needed to get more comfortable cueing single words before I advanced to the point of cueing sentences. In order to help me remember the hand shape and position necessary to form a specific consonant vowel combination, I needed repetition of single words. I found that driving, while alone in the car, a good place for me to practice. I would prefer to practice alone so others didn’t see my mistakes. I would find a street sign and figure out how to cue that short group of sounds. I kept a Cue Chart stuffed down beside my seat for the times I needed reminders, but I would try to practice without it. "STOP" was one of the first street signs I tackled. Speed limit signs helped me to begin cueing numbers. I felt I’d really accomplished something when I successfully cued "Fairfax County Parkway". I know that the idea of cueing while driving sounds rather dangerous, but we have a lot of stop lights around here and I could use all that wait time to concentrate on a different sound combination.

As I progressed to the point of sentences and phrases, I started to think about what things I would say frequently during the day, especially things I would say to my son. I began practicing phrases like, "Time to go", "Are you ready?", "Where’s your backpack?", "All done?"… When I found myself repeating phrases during the day I’d add them to the list.

Eventually speed became my goal. My accuracy had improved greatly, but I was too intimidated to cue to anyone older than my son for fear of being judged. So, I began cueing to music. I’d walk for exercise and wear my ear buds while listening to music. Familiar songs with words I already knew were best. Often to get one sentence right, I’d miss the next three, but that was ok because I’d gotten one right. I was making progress and that was the important thing.