Sunny, I think you sister can definitely help you with feedback. That is, she will be able to tell you when you are making a sound more clearly or less clearly. That kind of help is major. I would have loved it if anyone in my family would have been willing to help me that way when I was a kid.
Probably teaching you how to make a sound that you can't hear will be more of a challenge. I don't think most hearing people are accustomed to thinking about it consciously. It seems that they just do it, like they automatically move their body, arms and hands to catch a ball. I know in the past when I have asked people to write down the phonetic pronunciation of a word and NOT the spelling most people could not do it. I eventually learned to ask other people with hearing loss, mostly, for that info if for some reason I couldn’t get near a dictionary or I needed help figuring out how to pronounce a name of a person or place that wasn't in the dictionary. But hey, your sister has already taught you how to say the syllable "Ma". She must be naturally talented!
In case it's of interest, here's what I can recall that my effective speech therapists did for me. They broke down sounds for me this way --
* Where is the tongue?
* Does it move to make the sound? Or stays still?
* Is the sound voiced? Made more nasal? That is do you add vibration from your voice box or nose to that particular sound?
I think some sounds that add vibration from the voice box is called "voiced." FWIW, I always thought that term was weird. Obviously all sounds must be voiced, right? Otherwise, how could any hearing person hear them? But I guess the profession uses that term to distinguish between sounds that have voice box vibration from sounds that don't. For example -- when you get to the "th" sound -- I think "these" is considered voiced and "think" isn't considered voiced.
Also, one of the differences between the "m" and "p" sounds (which as I'm sure you know look alike on the lips) is that the "m" sound vibrates in both the voicebox and the nose and the "p" doesn't.
* How do you tweak the air from your lungs on its way out from your mouth?
In addition to knowing whether to add vibration from the voicebox, nose or both --
Do you squeeze it out like the "s" or "f"? And when you squeeze it, do you squeeze it near where the roof of the mouth ends ("s") or right behind the upper fronth teeth ("f")? Do you lightly pat it on its way out with your lips like with the "p"? Maybe pat it a little harder like with the "b"? And so on.
I think this area of speech therapy is called "articulation". Here's a 29-second MRI clip that shows how the "articulators" move while someone is talking:
link. No caption unfortunately but I think its still cool to see how the tongue, lips, roof of the mouth, back of the mouth, etc. changes over the 29 seconds while she is talking.
Speech therapy is an area that I think most state disability offices in the US would pay for if you wanted to go see a professional speech therapist. Perhaps this is the same in Canada?
If not, sometimes university and colleges look for people for their students to work with under supervision. If this is managed well by the school, it can be a win/win situation.
Perhaps your sister could sit in with you on the appointments so that she could better help you practice how to make the sounds in between the appointments.
