Fluency Lesson Ideas for Window Shopping

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Re: Addressing avoidance

From: Judy
Date: 22 Oct 2012
Time: 11:56:04 -0500
Remote Name: 173.76.249.43

Comments

Hi Alan, You raise so many relevant issues! Let me begin by saying I've read all of your ISAD papers. They left me puzzling over how to translate your experiences into acitivites for children and teens. Thank you for all of your writings! I want to direct readers to your powerful and so well-crafted story for children: "Changing the Words Around" in the 2004 ISAD conference (http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad7/papers/badmington7/badmington17.html I imagine the selection of carryover activities would depend greatly upon the culture in which a child/teen lives. I live in a suburb where stores are installing self-checkout stations. I don't even have to speak with a person to pay for my purchase! I do not ask my studens to speak with customers or store personnel, however, since I need to role model behavior, I have to figure out ways to engage people myself. These have been somewhat artificially staged, yet natural sounding conversations. I am asking about products I may or maynot have any intention of buying. Thinking-on-my-feet was more challenging than I expected and A.C. and I discovered that work on carryover of speech skills naturally became a larger issue of narrative language and social/pragmatic language skills. For example, what can one say while standing in a store aisle looking at car accessories? What questions can I ask a store clerk about back yard cooking grills? And where is there a store clerk? I went to the store with my students intending to find speaking tasks of gradually increaseing difficulty - designing such a hierarchy looks so easy on paper! I think the artificial nature of locating a friendly looking person for me to to speak with adds to the already contrived nature of some of our conversations. But, A.C. and I had to start somewhere. This is a process. Hopefully more ideas emerge with experience. Take care and have fun at ASHA !


Last changed: 10/22/12