What does an articulation disorder lead to in terms of speech?

• A. Enhanced fluency and rhythm
• B. Increased clarity of speech
• C. Unclear speech production
• D. Improved sentence construction

Answer: (C)

Articulation is about how the lips, tongue, jaw, and palate move to produce speech sounds. When there’s an articulation disorder, those movements don’t produce sounds accurately, so sounds may be substituted, distorted, or omitted. The overall effect is reduced intelligibility—the speech becomes unclear or hard to understand. This is different from issues with fluency or with forming complete sentences or using correct words, which are about other aspects of speech and language.