>*What are your thoughts on elongating the start of the sentence while talking to reduce blocks?* [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/11rfl5e/what_is_stutter_or_stammer/) post discusses the technique you mentioned: **How to elongate on hard letters?** You can elongate hard consonants like 't' and 'd'. The letter "T" is elongated by saying "Tssss". The letter "D" is elongated by saying "Dzzzz". The rule to prolongate a hard letter is by not fully closing the articulators, somewhere in between closed and not closed. You can try it out. **What are the positive effects of elongating?** If you elongate '*feared letters*' then it may lead to: * reducing repetitions: we do repetitions to avoid speech blocks. If we learn to stop doing secondary behaviors (like repetitions) then it becomes less hard to tackle the '*speech block*' problem in my opinion * reducing avoidance-behaviors (e.g., avoiding feared letters, substituting words, pausing, avoiding situations etc) * reducing overthinking (e.g., often we start overthinking when pronouncing a feared letter like '*Should I really try to say the feared word or will it have negative consequences*?'). A few reasons that we overthink is to: (1) negotiate whether to avoid the feared letter, and (2) engage in a discussion about what '*strategy*' to use. By definition, if we elongate a feared letter, then we are not avoiding a feared letter and we have already decided to use the strategy: '*elongating*'. In other words, elongation compensates excessively overthinking * reducing '*fear*' by pronouncing feared letters. This could reduce the surprise or panic that people who stutter (PWS) often experience * reducing '*fear of abandonment*': if we apply silent blocks then PWS often have negative experiences of people leaving, ignoring or interrupting us and other negative listener's responses. The positive effect of elongating is, that we let the listener know that we are still trying to speak which could result in (1) more patience from listeners so that they won't leave the conversation (**from the listener's viewpoint**), or (2) more calmness from us, after all, we can now stop fearing (most of the) negative listener's responses (**speaker's viewpoint**) **Conclusion**: Elongating itself doesn't cure stuttering, but at least by elongating feared letters we could approach a few angles from the stutter cycle. I recommend to tackle the stutter cycle from all angles with all possible strategies, including this strategy. In my experience, it is not effective to elongate while 'trying to speak fluently' or 'desiring fluency'. Because if we consider fluency as good and stuttering as bad, then it may lead to **(1)** feeling bothered by stuttering, and **(2)** excessively monitoring or anticipating in order to maintain fluency. It may be more effective to elongate while 'not caring about failing to speak fluently'. Additionally, I recommend to change the unhelpful goal: 'Fluency is success' to a helpful goal: '**Not caring about failing (or speech errors) is success**'