Tag Archive: pragmatics

AAC Posts from PrAACtical Week #4: January 2019

January 27, 2019 by Carole Zangari - Leave your thoughts

Happy Sunday, AAC friends. Here are some posts you may have missed in your busy week. Monday – Book Adaptations: Resources and Materials Tuesday – AAC Link Up Wednesday – Video of the Week: Important Considerations in the AAC Selection Process Thursday – PrAACtically February: AAC Resources for a Year of Core Words ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: And while you’re here, check out some of these past posts. 5 Ways to Promote Consistent AAC Use Twin Powers Unite: Teaching AAC and Sight Words Pragmatic Skill Instruction and AAC with Matthew Baud and Dr. Jill Senner Parent Collaboration in AAC Therapies PrAACtical Questions with Vicki Clarke: What’s the Role of Core Vocabulary? Finally, here’s one last chance to weigh in on a prAACtical question. Look for the results to be posted soon. Loading…

Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking

PrAACtical Resources: Pragmatic Profile for People Who Use AAC

March 19, 2018 by Carole Zangari - 1 Comment

We’ve shared the Pragmatics Profile of Everyday Communication Skills in Children (by Hazel Dewart and Susie Summers) previously, and it remains a very useful tool. More recently, it has been adapted by Suzanne Martin, Katherine Small, and Rachel Stevens to focus specifically on people who use AAC. The Pragmatic Profile for People Who Use AAC is a welcome addition to our AAC assessment toolkit. Many thanks to the ACE Centre for their leadership and support in this area. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking

Video of the Week: Chat with Me in AAC

December 20, 2017 by Carole Zangari - 4 Comments

As we all know, AAC learners need to use their augmentative tools and strategies to do more than ask for the things they want to do or have. But it can be tricky to figure out how to build competency with more social communicative functions. In today’s featured video, Matthew Baud and Dr. Jill Senner, of the Technology and Language Center, discuss some of the issues involved in expanding the pragmatic profiles of our AAC learners. They also demonstrate specialized social pages in some AAC systems. Handouts can be obtained from the TALC website or the link below. Download the handout here. You can learn more about pragmatic intervention from Matthew and Jill here. Direct Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGLiJRXXM88&t=1762s

Filed under: Video of the Week

5 PrAACtical Thoughts on Catch-Up Conversations

June 4, 2013 by Carole Zangari - Leave your thoughts

One of the things SLPs frequently do at the start of their therapy sessions is have some casual conversations with their clients to catch up on what happened since their last visit. Whether it is an elementary school student with ASD, a teenager with cerebral palsy, or an older adult with aphasia, we engage in polite conversation to find out what they’ve been up to and perhaps share a bit about our own experiences. Here are some thoughts on making those ‘catch-up conversations’ work from a prAACtical perspective. 1. Possible goal areas: initiate conversation; maintain dialogue on an established topic; redirect conversation to a new topic; respond to non-obligatory communication opportunities; use temporal terms in multi-word utterances; convey a personal narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end; use regular past tense verbs; ask partner-focused questions 2. Core language targets: it, we, they, do/did, have/had, was/were, not It was (not);... [Read More...]

Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking

Building Conversational Skills with Visual Supports

July 8, 2012 by Carole Zangari - Leave your thoughts

A young AAC user whom I know shared a story with me recently about feeling left out and struggling to find out why. Although she is smart, has age appropriate receptive language, and good command of her high tech SGD, building and maintaining friendships is a struggle. One of the things we’ll be doing to make changes in that area is to learn more about what makes a good conversation, adding vocabulary to make small talk easier, and practicing that. – Here’s a nice video, from Autism Teaching Strategies, that shows how to use visual supports and music to help learners remember to use some of the conversational continuers. Although Joel Shaul demonstrates this with visual supports that have words and phrases, the strategy works just as well with pictures for pre-literate communicators. – – Enjoy!