Appendix B: Standardized Speech Samples
It is helpful to have a standardized speech sample. Have the individual read the entire first
paragraph but do not measure the first and last sentences. The remaining four sentences
provide a 55-word (76-syllable) sample. The entire Rainbow Passage is included for further
sample material.
The Rainbow Passage
When sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism
and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into
many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round
arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently
beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot
of gold at one end. People look but no one ever finds it. When a
man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is
looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Throughout the centuries men have explained the rainbow in
various ways. Some have accepted it as a miracle without
physical explanation. To the Hebrews it was a token that there
would be no more universal floods.
The Greeks used to imagine that it was a sign from the gods to
foretell war or heavy rain. The Norsemen considered the rainbow
as a bridge over which the gods passed from the earth to their
home in the sky. Other men have tried to explain the
phenomenon physically. Aristotle thought that the rainbow was
caused by reflection of the suns rays by the rain. Since then
physicists have found that it is not the reflection, but refraction
by the raindrops which causes the rainbow. Many complicated
ideas about the rainbow have been formed. The difference in the
rainbow depends considerably upon the size of the water drops,
and the width of the colored band increases as the size of the
drops increases.
The actual primary rainbow observed is said to be the effect of
superposition of a number of bows. If the red of the second bow
falls upon the green of the first, the result is to give a bow with an
abnormally wide yellow band, since red and green light when
mixed form yellow. This is a very common type of bow, one
showing mainly red and yellow, with little or no green or blue.
The Source for Oral-Facial Exercises:
Updated and Expanded
244
Copyright 2001 LinguiSystems, Inc.
