Article: Mark - Modelling in Teaching of Talking

Mark - Teaching of Talking

You can learn how to really love doing speech and language stimulation with people who have mild to profound speaking difficulties, if they are stimulable. Stimulability is the ability to repeat a sound, word, phrase or sentence with a MODEL. I have shared many of the foundation stones about our work, and this is another one of them, THE MODEL. Almost every living thing in the animal kingdom has a model to learn from.

While out walking around the lake this morning we saw a mother duck and her babies. The mother was modeling various behaviors for the ducklings, and teaching them how to swim. Many of the ducklings did not want to jump in the water from the elevated bank. There were some who were very brave, and jumped right in, while some others were hesitant, and fearful. The ones who were brave jumped right in without having to analyze everything. Once in the water the little ducklings floated around and paddled forward, as if they had always known how to paddle in water.  It was interesting to watch the ones in the water "jumping" out of the water and back onto the elevated bank from the floating position. They were jumping up in the air, and then as if by magic, they landed back on the elevated bank!

These ducklings needed a model to give them the security to stretch their wings, and challenge them to take the plunge. Without a MODEL to encourage them, how would the ducklings even know to go into the water?

The Teaching of Talking Model is about speaking again. It is not about learning how to write, spell, or read. These are all possibilities for the person with the speaking difficulty. The majority will tell you they want to TALK, or TALK BETTER. Therefore I want you to think of the person who has minimal speech and language like a baby or toddler or has very limited speech. If we were to stimulate the speech of the baby or the toddler, I don't think many of us would pull out work sheets, or sentences to read or write.

The mother, who is the MODEL will gently and lovingly speak to the child and say the word or words that are appropriate to the speaking situation. Therefore although written word cues may be helpful, our approach emphasizes the spontaneity of conversation or the interchange between the Speech Model SM and the Person with the Communication Difficulty PCD during daily interactions at home in ADL's and within simple questions and answers. That is where the "fun" of the interaction or therapy really is.

There must be a good speech model SM in the approach to The Teaching of Talking. Someone who can model the words, phrases, sentences, that contain the syntax, grammar, and articulation, prosody, and intonation which make up some of the principal parts of speaking. The PCD with limited speaking, whether a child or person with a stroke or head injury, does not always have access to the principal parts of speaking. That is where the SM comes in. The critical piece here is that the speech model within a communicative interchange with the PCD can give them the information they need in order to say a sound, word, phrase or sentence just by asking them a question.

 So if I were to say to you: ...

See the full article Modelling in Teaching of Talking.