What is the Speech Banana?
Hint: It’s not yellow. You can’t eat it. A Speech Banana doesn’t grow on trees or bushes. Neither do most bananas, but that’s a different story.
The Speech Banana can, however, help teachers who are teaching letter sounds to their students. It can aid in identifying those who are weak in auditory discrimination and who might need the help of a speech therapist and/or an audiologist.
The Speech Banana is a chart that describes frequency and intensity levels of letter sounds in typical human conversation. It is shaped like a banana.
If you are teaching consonant sounds, and you have a student who seems to have difficulty learning particular sounds, you will do the child a huge favor in looking at the Speech Banana graph. Some conversational sounds might be inaudible to the child. Volume and pitch are important considerations in auditory discrimination.
You might recommend a hearing test. I have encountered young students who have some hearing loss who were categorized as dyslexic but were not.
To see the Speech Banana graph and for a more complete explanation of it, see
And for a fun extra practice activity for beginning and ending consonant sounds, see Reading Spotlight’s
Best Bingo Bundle: Consonant Sounds
The games are available, individually or bundled, in the Reading Spotlight Store.
@Reading Spotlight 2026
Here are some interesting posts from my friends at TBOTEMC: