First testimony

TESTIMONY OF FR.ERUDAYA RAJA ON THE SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPY GIVEN BY GEMMA BILES, Speech and Language Therapist, BA(hons),MSc, certMRCSLT, HCPC registered.

My name is Fr. Erudaya Raja, a Roman Catholic Priest working in the Holy Ghost Church, Yeovil, Somerset.  I come from India, where English is not the first language of the people.  Prior to coming to the UK, I had the opportunity to study English as my second language.

When I came here, initially I had a lot of difficulties with listening, speaking and understanding the conversation of people.  Naturally I lacked confidence using English. My task here was to celebrate Mass and give Sermons to my parishioners. So I needed fluency of language to communicate with them. In this situation, a parishioner voluntarily came to my rescue, finding a well-qualified, efficient person, Gemma Biles to assist me with Speech and Language Therapy (SLT).

Initially Gemma collected all the data in an informal way to identify, assess and analyse the areas in which I needed therapy.  Accordingly Gemma diagnosed the areas like speech pronunciation, intonation, rhythm and conversation skills, where I needed more attention.

Gemma used a one to one approach and taught me how to pronounce the words properly with intonation and breath. Words TH-Initial (e.g. thorn, thunder, think, thirsty), TH-Medial (e.g. truthful, wealthy, birthday, pathway), TH-Final (e.g. cloth, tooth, month, earth), D-final (e.g. food, hand, good, sand) and made a list of words that needed proper pronunciation. Later as we proceeded with the therapy many new phrases and sentences that would come frequently in the Gospel were studied (e.g. this Sacrifice, us sinners, his disciples, who we, his suffering, begged him). Many words were analysed (e.g. widow, daughter, pleading, water, blood, thanks, death). This helped me to identify more common phrases that frequently come in the Eucharistic Prayer.  Now the words were distinct from one another without additional sounds. In addition repetition, modelling and listening were used to ensure that I developed an understanding of speech sounds, pronunciation and intonation of phrases.  In each session we practiced the Sermon and Mass regularly.

Today I am proud to say that I owe a lot to Gemma, who enabled me to reach my goal.  I do appreciate her for her commitment and dedication. She has instilled me with a lot of confidence and self-esteem. I am grateful to her and wish her God’s abundant blessings and the best of luck for a bright future.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,

Fr. Erudayaraja.

Missionaries of St Francis de Sales.