Tag Archive: Scripts

Narrative Assessment and People who Use AAC

March 16, 2013 by - Leave your thoughts

Narrative Assessment and People who Use AAC

This month, we’ve been talking about building narrative skills in our AAC clients. We tried to build the case that including narrative language goals in our intervention allows us to help people who use AAC to participate more fully in social exchanges, relay more in-depth information, and achieve greater academic success. But how do we know where to start in narrative intervention? And how do we measure progress? In this post, we share some thoughts on the assessment of narrative language in AAC. Most test batteries that assess narrative language are designed to take a snapshot of what the learner has already mastered in terms of telling personal narratives, story retelling, or scripts. This allows us to look beyond MLU, morphology, and grammar and can be useful in determining whether intervention is needed. Some scholars, however, have noted the limitations of this “one shot” approach, particularly for learners whose communication... [Read More...]

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Beyond requesting: Using Scripts to Teach Conversation

February 9, 2013 by - 11 Comments

Beyond Requesting: PrAACtical Scripts to Teach Conversations

This month’s communication and language strategy goes beyond requesting into conversation. Beginning (and more advanced) communicators can be introduced to conversations through scripts.  Scripts for teaching the art of conversation can help  give the language to initiate, maintain, extend, and terminate social and conversational exchanges. Scripts can be used to talk about special interests, to participate in activities, and much more. When we teach scripts in a  way  a learner ‘learns’, the script shows the guidelines, boundaries, and organization of conversations.  The communication and language goal is conversation. The strategy to teach conversation is scripts. Scripts are not that foreign to the conversational situation. We all may use scripts at times. Think about your ‘small talk’ scripts or your scripts that help you in unfamiliar or difficult conversations. If learners have difficulty knowing how to participate in conversation, a script can capitalize on strengths like memory and doing well with... [Read More...]

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