Building Speech is a new intervention approach designed for children of any age who have a limited expressive repertoire. Building Speech is a phonetics‐based approach for selecting words and phrases to target in therapy, proceeding from phonetically‐basic constructions to incrementally increasing the complexity of the sounds, sound combinations, and syllable length in target words and phrases. To increase your understanding of the foundation for Building Speech, we will begin with a brief review of the acquisition of early typical vocal and verbal skills, including some of the early patterns of speech development. We will discuss the eight patterns targeted in Building Speech and reviewtheir rationale, building phonetic complexity into the goals and target words for children with CAS by constructing words and phrases basedon each pattern. We then will provide sample goals for each pattern and show videotaped examples of the progression of phonetic complexityin children with CAS. This session is intended for speech‐language pathologists with a working knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet.