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From: Kathy
Date: 21 Oct 2012
Time: 16:15:25 -0500
Remote Name: 99.153.185.119
Thanks. One downside is starting with a reading activity for a teen whose major challenge is reading more than speaking. In all cases, I work on fluency in a hierarchy --- I do everything I can to engineer practice techniques and activities that are the least stressful and have the greatest opportunity for success. Teens have experienced enough tough talking situations already. I want to help them find a situation with the greatest opportunity for reduced tension and increased fluency and work up from there. Starting out, I have every client complete a speaking hierarchy as a part of the initial assessment. This helps determine where we start --- the least stressful speaking situation (whether reading or speaking) and at the lowest language level necessary to give the speaker best chance of making some changes in his or her speech. So, if reading is the most stressful situation a speaker faces, I would start that client’s therapy with another activity that is lower on his or her stress ladder. I have used this technique with younger students – late elementary. I carefully engineer the passages to be at least one full grade level below the child’s fluent reading level --- this might be two grade levels below their actual school grade level. I often start with humorous poems (Alan Katz is a favorite) or “Knock Knock” jokes—reducing the language level to facilitate smoother speech. Kathy