One common speech problem that adults can have is apraxia or motor speech disorder. This condition is caused by damage to the speech-related areas of the brain.
Patients with apraxia have difficulty putting the sounds of syllables together to make words. Therapists engage patients in an activity that slows down the pace of speech and practices sounds over and over. The patient reads a list of simple sentences while a metronome taps out a slow pattern of speech. The patient repeats the first sentence over and over to the beat of the metronome. When the first sentence is mastered, he moves on the next sentence.