Voice Therapy

If you’re a teacher, a parent who spends a lot of time reading aloud, or honestly anyone who talks for a living, you’ve probably had days where your voice just… gives out. It goes raspy, it drops in volume, or it disappears by 3pm. Most of us push through and wait for it to come back.

But in this episode of Bilingual Speech Spot, voice therapist Yeptain offered a different way to think about it — and a simple technique you can try today.

What We Talked About

Yeptain is a speech-language pathologist specialising in voice, currently based at the University of Melbourne where he has established a Gender Affirming Voice Clinic. In this first episode of a two-part series, we focused on general voice health — the kind that applies to anyone who uses their voice as a tool, day in and day out.

The conversation started with a question: who shows up at voice clinics? The answer was mostly professional voice users — teachers, performers, salespeople. Not because they’re careless, but because they’re in high-demand situations where the environment itself drives vocal strain.

Three Insights Worth Sitting With

1. It’s often the environment, not you

Yeptain introduced the concept of voice ergonomics — a way of assessing not just the person with a voice problem, but the environment that created the conditions for it. Think about a classroom full of 25 children on plastic chairs. The scraping, the talking, the background hum — all of that noise triggers what’s called the Lombard Effect. Without realising it, everyone in the room (including the teacher) starts speaking louder to be heard. It’s involuntary. And over months and years, it adds up.

This reframe matters because it shifts the conversation from “you’re using your voice wrong” to “this environment is asking too much of your voice.” Both things can be true, but the second one often gets overlooked. Practical measures — like putting tennis ball caps on chair legs to reduce scraping, using a classroom noise indicator app, or using a microphone — address the root of the problem rather than just the symptom.

2. Nodules are more treatable than people think

Vocal nodules — small callous-like growths on the vocal folds — are common in heavy voice users. They develop when the folds are repeatedly strained, causing the tissue to thicken as a protective response. The result is a voice that sounds husky, tired, or reduced in volume.

The good news: small nodules can often be resolved through voice therapy alone, without surgery. The approach involves retraining how you use your voice, reducing the compensatory effort that developed around the nodule, and giving the folds a chance to recover. Surgery is sometimes considered for large nodules, but it carries its own risks — and if the underlying habits don’t change, nodules can return.

The first step if you’re concerned? See an ear, nose, and throat specialist to find out exactly what’s happening before deciding on a course of action.

3. The bubble-blowing technique (SOVT) — and the physics behind it

The star of this episode was a technique called the Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract Exercise, or SOVT. It sounds technical, but the basic version is this: put a straw in 2cm of water, and blow gently until you see bubbles. No talking required to begin with.

What’s happening underneath: blowing through the straw creates a slight resistance in the vocal tract, which changes the air pressure relationship above and below the vocal folds. This helps them vibrate more efficiently — with less effort, less impact, and less strain. Yeptain described a colleague who used this technique before a difficult phone call when their voice was almost gone — and it worked.

It’s physics, not magic. And it’s appropriate for children too. In fact, there are structured programs — including a “Bubble Club” used by children in musical theatre — that build this kind of vocal warm-down into performance routines.

What Teachers, Parents, and Practitioners Can Do

For teachers and professional voice users:

• Try SOVT (bubble blowing in 2cm of water) for 3–5 minutes as a vocal warm-up or when your voice is feeling strained
• Advocate for environmental changes: noise-reducing measures, microphone use, and classroom acoustics matter
• See an ENT and SLP if your voice has been rough for more than a couple of weeks

For parents:

• Children who are regularly in noisy environments (especially young children close to floor level) can develop voice problems too — not because they’re doing anything wrong, but because of the noise load around them
• If your child’s voice sounds husky or tired regularly, it’s worth a conversation with your GP or an SLP

For SLPs:

• SOVT is well-supported by evidence and accessible to a wide age range — it’s a good first tool to have in your toolkit
• Voice ergonomics is an advocacy role as much as a therapy role

Listen to Bilingual Speech Spot Episode 19 for the full conversation, including a live SOVT demonstration.

Visit blackburnslp.com.au/resources | Follow @phd.speechie.mum on Instagram