|
Copyright controlled materials. Cannot be reprinted without permission of the publisher.
From Chapter 9, Conversational Skills
There are specific skills that you need to know to start a conversation. Typically developing children often learn these skills by observing other people. Some children with Down syndrome will learn conversational skills by watching, but many children will need to be taught conversational skills. How do you approach someone to start a conversation? What do you say? Some children poke the other child or get right in their faces. What happens when they want to join a conversation that is already in progress?
To hold up your end of a conversation, you need to use many different language and speech skills. You need to listen to the other speakers and determine what the topic of the conversation is. You need to think of something relevant to say. Then you need to wait for a logical place to jump into the conversation and make your contribution, formulating your sentences so others can understand them and speaking intelligibly. You may need to move closer or enter the circle in which people are standing. If you are sitting a group, you may need to lean forward to enter a conversation. You also need to know when to stop talking so that others don’t become annoyed at you for monopolizing the conversation.
Not surprisingly, most children and young teens with Down syndrome have trouble with conversational skills. In fact, as you may recall from Chapter 2, complex conversational skills are on the list of communication skills that are the most difficult for people with Down syndrome.
Children with Down syndrome are delayed in acquiring conversational skills. However, in studies matching young children who have Down syndrome with typically developing children based on language level, not chronological age, children with Down syndrome compared favorably in their conversational skills. For instance, if your child’s MLU (typical sentence length) is four words, you might expect him to have the conversational skills of a typically developing child with an MLU of four words. So, age and experience helps children with Down syndrome learn conversational skills, as well as learning and practice in speech therapy.
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS?
Conversational skills is a very broad category that can include speech and language skills as well as pragmatics. Within the area of conversational skills, we include:
- Starting conversations
- Taking turns in the conversation
- Choosing topics and staying on the topic
- Knowing what information the listener brings with (putting yourself in his shoes)
- Understanding how to talk with different people in different roles
- Knowing how to get and give more information if there are communication misunderstandings
- Changing topics
- Ending conversations
Starting Conversations
Children and young teens with Down syndrome can have a variety of problems in starting conversations. First, they may not even try to initiate conversations and instead be content not to say anything or to wait until the other person asks them a question. Or they may make an opening gambit that does not make sense to the other listener(s)--perhaps because their comment is unintelligible or garbled grammatically, or because they talk about something or someone the other person is unfamiliar with. For example, a child might say “Mandy is coming today” to someone who doesn’t know who Mandy is or where she might be coming. Children with Down syndrome may also make statements about topics that their listeners have no interest in. For example, a child might say “I have all the Full House DVDs to a child who has never watched the series. And some children with Down syndrome just have difficulty starting a conversation because they don’t know how to do that. They are not sure what to say.
Many of the techniques that are helpful in teaching children with autism spectrum how to start a conversation can also help children with Down syndrome. For example:
- SLPs may use a therapy program such as Conversations that uses a coaching model to teach groups of children how to have conversations.
- You can write a Social Story or a script about how to begin conversations and read it with your child before he goes into a situation where he can practice the skill. For example, if your 8-year-old goes to a daycare program after school, you might write something like: Snack time is a good time talk to other kids. I can talk to the kids who sit at my table. I can ask Joe and Nick, “Do you like this snack?” (What TV shows do you like?”)
A Comic Strip Conversation could also be used to help your child understand how to start a conversation. Comic strip conversations are similar to Social Stories and were another technique originated by Carol Gray. The difference is that a Comic Strip Conversation often shows cartoonish stick figures interacting, with speech bubbles showing their actual words (and sometimes with thought bubbles showing characters’ thoughts). For example, using the same daycare scenario described above, a Comic Book Conversation would include stick figure drawings of your child, Nick, and Joe. You would write suggested words for your child to say in speech bubbles along with the answers Joe and Nick might give. (See Comic Strip Conversation by Carol Gray for more information.)
- Use video modeling to teach conversational skills. See Chapter 8.
If your child is older and can read, he might benefit from using a Power Card. See below.
- You can prompt your child to start a conversation when it is clear that he wants to talk to someone. For instance, you are at a company or support group picnic and your child keeps looking at another child. If your child is older, you might tell him, “Go say 'Hi.' Ask him what grade he is in and where he goes to school.” For a younger child, you might suggest something concrete he can do: “Bring the beach ball over and ask if he wants to play ball with you.”
Power Cards
Power Cards™, developed by Elisa Gagnon (2001), use special interests to motivate students with autism. Power Cards are most often used with students who can read, but parents and teachers can adapt them for use with nonreaders, as long as the pictures used clearly represent the concept you are teaching. Power Cards can help an individual increase appropriate conversational topics. In addition, Power Cards can help children understand understand language related to abstract concepts.
Power Cards can be made in a smaller, business-card size for a child to keep in his pocket or carry in a wallet, or they can be attached to a desk. Adding a photograph or drawing to the card will make it more attractive to the student.
|
