Handy tips

Language Enhancement Tips

Language Enhancement Tips
  • Try to link any sound the child unintentionally utters to a certain object after adding some modifications to the sound produced by the child so as to change it to a meaningful word e.g. if the child says [bo], the adult puts a ball in the child’s hand and says [ball].
  • Self-Talk: The adult repeats what he/she is doing while the child is interacting with him / her.
  • Parallel-Talk: The adult describes and comments on what the child is doing or is interested in.
  • Focused Stimulation: The adult repeatedly models a target structure to stimulate the child to use it e.g. if the target is plural constructions, the clinician might say things like “The girls are eating from the plates. The plates have many flowers and butterflies on them”.
  • Expansion: The adult expands the child’s telegraphic or incomplete utterance into a grammatically-correct sentence e.g. if the child says “Daddy go”, the adult says ”Yes, Daddy is going to work”.
  • Extension (Expatiation): The adult comments on the child’s utterance and adds a new relevant information to it, for example, if the child says “The girl is eating pizza”, the adult repeats, “yes, the girl is eating hot delicious pizza at the restaurant”.
  • Corrective feedback: The adult repeats what the child incorrectly says, but in a correct form and without directly asking the child to repeat it after him and while stressing on the correct form e.g. if the child says, “dud”, the adult repeats, “Yes, a duck”.