SPEECH AND LANGUAGE STIMULATION TECHNIQUES FOR

CHILDREN

PRESENTED BY : KUNNAMPALLIL GEJO JOHN, MASLP

SPEECH LANGUAGE PATHOLOGIST/THERAPIST

Speech and language stimulation techniques for children:

Children learn to talk because this is an entirely normal aspect of their lives as
social persons. In order to achieve speech; they need warm affection, constant attention
and persistent stimulus. All day long, the mothers talks to her baby and as he begins to
coo and babble, encourage him to talk to her. Besides parents, older brothers and sisters
are joyful sources of speech and language stimulation. If baby is looked upon as peculiar
or different is ignored, or if his speech stimulus is sharply limited, he misses the major
support that he needs. It is good for parents to remember that he is the child, not a little
adult and that it is natural for him to chatter along. He needs help in learning to listen to
him talk, and in comparing what he hears himself saying with he hears his parents saying.

Mother- Child interaction is a predominant feature in relating home environment

in general, to language development in the child. Mothers who ask Qs, who rarely negate
and give few direction, facilitates the child‟s environment of language. The mother, who
stimulates challenges and encourages independence in the child, facilitates the child‟s
understanding and reasoning capabilities. The style, which the mother adopts while
speaking to the child, is significant and very valuable in improving the reasoning,
understanding and speaking abilities

A number of clinical techniques has been found to be useful in overcoming

deviant language and establishing appropriate language structures. These techniques are
intended to be applicable at many levels of language training. They may be used
individually or in conjunction with one another. It is presumed that the capable adult
working with language deficient or deviant in child will certainly find ways to modify,
extend and enhance these techniques even further to help the child achieve the best
language skills possible.

1. Echoing:

In this technique, the adult echoes the child‟s utterance back to him. The adult
may “WH” such as what or where in place of an unintelligible word from the child or he
may echo the child‟s utterance with a rising intonation, as if to Qs. What the child said.
 This technique need not always require that the child respond at all. It does,
however, let the child knows some of what he says, is not understood by an adult.
Further, specifies to the child, which part of his comment was not understood, thus
enabling the child to focus on particular parts, rather than having to reiterate his entire
comment.

Illustration:

Child: He got 2 magos (unintelligible)

Mother: You got 2 what?

Child: Magos

Mother: Mangoes! Oh! U got 2 mangoes..

Child: Mangoes… chweath..

Mother: Mangoes are what?

Child: Chweath.

Mother: yes, mangoes are sweet.

2. Verbal imitation:

In this technique, the child repeats after the mother. But a child will not be able to
imitate those structures that are beyond his own level or linguistics competence. Imitation
also depends on the child‟s memory span.

While using this technique, one should use the forms which are just slightly above
the child‟s own present level of functioning. The length of sentence should not exceed the
child‟s memory span. Imitation is useful in achieving the spontaneous production of
speech. It assists the child in becoming aware of the new structure to be learnt. Imitation
of this new structure will provide the child with an example of where and how the new
structure relates to other aspects of the sentence, which the child already knows. It also
plays a role in the child‟s acquisition of the language rules, as this tunes the child to parts
of the sentence that he is currently not aware of.

Illustration:

Mother: Will u repeat after me? Today is Friday..

Child: Today…..today…

Mother: No, no say today is Friday

Child: Mm…today is feeday..

Mother: Friday…say Friday…

3. Modeling:

This technique can be used before and after the child makes a comment. The
mother offers more information to the child. While her sentence structure is more
elaborate, this is not her primary intention to offer the child a more complex sentence, but
to offer meaningful utterance. It gives the child more things to think about and thus to
comment upon the listener. This technique has 2 strong points:

i) It draws from what the child says to extend the child‟s comments.

ii) It does not correct or repeat the child‟s syntactic forms or sentence
structure.

Thus, it does not require that a child produce a form that that he may be unable to use
correctly except as rate imitation, word by word. There are 2types of modeling:

a) Antecedent technique in modeling

Before the child says anything, the mother gives the model and then the child speaks.

b) Sub sequential technique in modeling:

The child speaks 1st and then the mother comments on the child‟s
utterance without correcting or repeating.
Illustration;

Child: Mummy, chocolate….mmmm

Mother: No, not now dear, we will buy chocolates in the evening.

Child: Mmmm…bikki?

Mother: Ok dear, I will get u both chocolates and biscuits in the evening

Child: Evening? Why? ……….mmmm

Mother: Shops are closed now. We will go out for shopping only in the evening.

Child: Shopping! Evening!......oooooooo

4. Discriminative modeling:

Correct & incorrect responses are modeled consecutively, asking the child to
imitate the correct form, as soon as it is modeled. Modeling of both correct and incorrect
responses encourages discrimination between correct & incorrect responses. The correct
form is strengthened & the incorrect form is weakened.

Illustration:

Mother: See the picture. Tell me, which is correct- „the boy is running‟ or „the boy is
hopping‟

Child: The boy is running.

Mother: Good, here‟s the chocolate for the correct answer.

5. Demonstration actions:

This technique involves the physical acting out of what is said. The child and the
instructor physically go through the action as it has being discussed. This technique is
intended to the language form to the event itself. The real physical action paired to the
language provides the child, a more detailed comprehension or understanding than does a
picture. It involves the child more directly as a participant. This technique is quite useful
with a very young child who may become bored, unless he is physically active and
involved in the situation. It works well for the child, whose language skills are at a very
basic level.

Illustration:

Mother: Open the door child, child. See the picture. Child tell me, which is correct-

„The boy is running‟ or „the boy is hopping‟.

Child: The boy is running.

Mother: Good, here is the chocolate for the correct answer.

5. Demonstration actions:

This technique involves the physical acting out of what is said. The child and the
instructor physically go through the action as it has being discussed. This technique is
intended to the language form to the event itself. The real physical action paired to the
language provides the child, a more detailed comprehension or understanding than does a
picture. It involves the child more directly as a participant. This technique is quite useful
with a very young child who may become bored, unless he is physically active and
involved in the situation. It works well for the child, whose language skills are at a very
basic level.

Illustration:

Mother: Open the door, child. See how I am opening it.

Child: Open door‟ (does the action)

Mother: That‟s good, you have opened the door. Now, try to close it along with it.

6. Commands:

Commands are the sentences, which direct the person to carry out certain actions.
The use of commands can be employed for both understanding and production skills.
Commands can be used with the children, at all levels of language learning & they should
be from simple to complex. After a command is given, the child id expected to
understand the instruction and then demonstrate his comprehension by accurately doing,
as told. When the child is taught to command, he is said to develop some degree of
control over his environment, by using language as a tool.

Illustration:

Mother: Give me any one square from the table.

Child: Here, square.

Mother: Now give me a blue and red square from the table.

Child: Here, 2 square.

Mother: Thank you, can you keep the white square on the blue square and bring it to me.

Child: (does the action)

Mother: Yes. Good! Thank you.

7. Binary Choice:

Often, the parent or the clinician does not understand what the child is trying to
say, wither because the child is unintelligible or does not make sense with his choice of
word combination. The adult can often establish some limits on the child‟s possible range
of answers and can, in this way, have a better means of understanding the child‟s
response. By presenting the child with two or more possible acceptable choice, the adult
is narrowing the range of responses that he will have to figure out. It may be used
effectively to help the child compare and contrast language concepts and to stabilize new
language forms. The binary choice technique also helps in developing the syntactic and
semantic skills.

Illustration:

Child: Mom…..eat….

Mother: What do you want to eat? Do you want dosa or idli?

Child: Want dosa

Mother: How many dosas do you want? One or two?

Child: Two

Pictures can also be presented to the child to elicit responses

(Picture of a child eating ice-cream is shown)

Mother: What is this child eating? An ice-cream or lollipop?

Child: Ice-cream

Mother: Yes, the child is eating ice-cream. Do you want a toffee or candy?

Child: Candy…. Candy…

8. Expansion:

Expansion is the technique of expanding or re-formulating the child‟s utterance

into an adult like form, either in terms of sentence structure (grammatically) or with
request to the meaning.

This technique provides the child greater accuracy either grammatically or

meaning wise. In this way, the listener more readily understands child.

By expanding the child‟s utterances to an adult like form the mother shows the
child how to get this specific message across more effectively and the mother/adult can
also determine what the child intended to say. Through this technique, mothers verbally
interact with their children.

Expansion is of two types:

1) Grammatical (syntactical)

2) Meaning related (semantically)

Illustration

Semantic expansion:

Child: Mummy, bus go.

Mother: That is not a bus. That is a lorry.

Child: Mom. Red, bicycle.

Mother: No, see the color. It‟s a yellow bike.

Child: Auto come

Mother: Oh! Auto has come. Let‟s go home.

Syntactic Expansion:

Child: Mummy, chapathi

Mother: Say, I want chapathi

Child: Mom, I wan…. Chapathi. Daddy eat.

Mother: Yes, daddy is coming to eat now.

Child: Mummy, milk….. dress

Mother: Oh! No! The milk has spilt over your dress

Child: Dress…. Wet…

Mother: Yes. Dress has become wet. Come on, let me change the dress for you.

9. Semantic cueing:

In this technique, the mother or the adult gives meaningful cues to the child, so
that he can easily come out with the target or the required responses. This technique is
useful when the child has responded inappropriately or is at a loss to respond at all. It
provides the child the required stimulus that may elicit the target responses, it helps the
child to recall or retrieve a label, which he is made to express independently. It can also
be used to establish new words or concepts. The new information can be paired through
the cues to what the child already knows. It encourages the child to do some processing
to derive a response than merely telling him the specific response required.

Illustration

(A picture is shown)

Mother: What is this picture about?

Child: quietly sees the picture

Mother: A child is doing something with the ball

Child: He is playing

Mother: Yes, the child is playing with the ball. What are you doing?

Child: See pictures

Mother: Yes. You are seeing the pictures

10. Shaping:

Complex target behaviors need to be simplified, so that the child is able to learn
them easily step by step. In sequential steps, the components are put together to achieve
the final complex, integrated behavior.

Illustration

(Mother has a chocolate. The child sees it and stretches out his hand)

Child: Ch…..ch….. um….

Mother: You want toffee?

Child: Ch….ch…..tof….

Mother: Yes, say toffee

Child: T….top….topee

Mother: No say toffee dear

Child: Top…..fee…

Mother: Hm, once more say toffee

Child: Toffee

Mother: That‟s correct, say – mummy I want toffee

Child: Me wan…. Top…fee….

Mother: Say, I want toffee

Child: I wan toffee

Mother: WANT say it once again dear

Child: I want toffee

Mother: Very good, darling. Here take this toffee

11. Fading:

It is defined as a technique in which special stimulus control of target behavior,

created by clinician is reduced in gradual steps. While the same responses are
consistently evoked, the special stimuli are gradually withdrawn. Modeled stimulus is
faded step by step, till the response is strengthened. Initially the clinician models the
response with an appropriate level of vocal reliably; the clinician reduces the vocal
intensity. As the child begins to imitate the response reliably, the clinician reduces the
vocal intensity of modeling with softer and softer voice on successive trials until the
voice is completely faded. Manual guidance as well as pictures used can be faded
similarly.
Illustration

Mother: What is this dear? It is something which you eat and green in color

Child: (pause)…. Um…. apple

Mother: See this picture. It is green in color and tastes sweet. You can see this in bunches

Child: Guava…. No…. gapes

Mother: Hm… it is grapes. Say GRAPES

Child: gapes… gapes….. sweet

Mother: very good. Now you can have this bunch of grapes for yourself

12. Sentence completion:

In this technique, an incomplete sentence is presented to the child and he has to

complete the sentence with an appropriate word. It provides as much or as little
assistance to the child as needed. It can be inflectional ending or a phrase. As the child
advances, this technique enable the clinician to reduce the amount of stimuli needed to
elicit a response can allow for the variety of responses to be acceptable.

A variation of this technique is to have the child begin a sentence with the
structures which he is learning and then allow the clinician to finish the sentence. This
presents information in a structured way to the child. It can be used across all levels of
language complexity, from the one word response level through more elaborate or
advanced multiword response levels.

Illustration

(The child is shown a picture of a play-ground)

Clinician: The boys are playing….

Child: Foot-ball

Clinician: the girls are playing….

Child: Kho-kho

Clinician: What are these old people doing? Sitting on a…..

Child: The…… bench. Me sit ……mmm……I sit

Clinician: Say, I will sit on the……

Child: Chair!

Clinician: O.K. let‟s sit on the chair.

13. Error identification:

In this technique, the child is presented two sentences of any language structure.
The child has to identify the error in the sentence and based on his knowledge, he has to
put forth more a correct form.

Scientific and syntactic errors are introduced in the sentences and the child has to
correct the sentences. Semantic correction deal with the meaningfulness of the sentence
and syntactic correction deals with grammatical structure of the sentence. While the child
may not always be able to correct or accurately form a sentence, he may have some
knowledge of what makes the sentence the acceptable or unacceptable. Even though, the
child may not be totally adequate they do tell the clinician something about what the
child knows about the language, how much he is yet to know.

This technique is useful as a means of stabilizing a new language behavior that

has been acquired. Once the child knows what the language form is, and when to use it,
this technique provides the child to a means of sharpening his knowledge of how the
newly acquired form may be adopted. The child would be expected to identify where the
form was used correctly and incorrectly, thus improving his knowledge of the rules.

Illustration

Clinician: Is this sentence right? – “I go to the shop everyday”

Child: No
Clinician: O.K. that‟s fine. Try to correct the sentence.

Child: I went to the shop.

Clinician: Yes. Good

14. Questions:

It‟s one of the best methods to obtain a response from an individual. Questions can be of
3 types.

1. Questions requiring yes-no response

Ex: Did you eat in the morning?

2. Questions requiring a naming response

Ex: What is that?

2. Questions requiring an open ended response

Ex: Where did you go yesterday evening?

In eliciting a language sample from the child, the open ended question tends to be
most effective type, as it requires more language usage than yes-no questions,
requiring a one-word naming response.

The open ended question allows the child several possible answers, whereas the
yes-no or naming type of question requires that the child respond with one specific
word which of course, helps the child who is limited in his expressive skills. The
open ended question not only gives the child the opportunity of responding with a
variety of appropriate answers, but further, it makes for a higher likelihood of
successful responses.

Illustration:

Clinician: When did u go to your uncle‟s house?

Child: Yesterday
Clinician: How did you go?

Child: By bus

Clinician: Why did u go to your uncle‟s house?

Child: See uncle

Clinician: What did u do there?

Child: Play games and ate biscuits

Clinician: Who all are there in your uncle‟s house?

Child: Uncle, aunty, rohit…….

15. Sentence re-arrangement:

This technique facilitates the child‟s activity to organize his words into a
meaningful utterance. It‟s useful for the child who has the ability for using one, two
word utterances to label persons, things and activities. This technique can facilitate
the child to see the order and relationship of these words in a sentence. The language
training program must aim, not only at encouraging children to link linguistic forms
and devices with categories of experience, but also helping them to improve on their
initial guesses about those categories when they are incorrect. This technique
provides the word from which the child can create his own sentence, by analyzing
relationships between these words and categories of experiences. This technique can
be used to develop many levels of language skill and is applicable to the development
of early 2-3 word sentence.

Illustration:

Clinician: What do you see in the picture, dear?

Child: Dog, boy

Clinician: Read the following words. Can you arrange them to describe this picture?
(Dog, pet, boy)
Child: The dog pet the boy

Clinician: No, No! The dog does not pet the boy. What does the boy do?

Child: The boy is petting the dog

Clinician: Yes that‟s good

16. Story Telling:

It can help the child to sequence ideas, to retrain information and to use particular
words, inflectional endings and sentence types. It serves as a type of structured
conversational speech. A story is told to the child and later on questions are asked.
These questions should require yes/no, naming, or open ended responses, depending
on the child‟s skills. The child is expected to make up a story himself, using a set of
pictures, arranged in sequential order. The child might ask questions to the clinician
abut the story. This technique is effective one for developing both production and
comprehension skills and it can be used to find out the child‟s syntactic and semantic
level. It is also used in stabilizing new language forms.

Illustration:

(The story of “The thirsty crow” is narrated to the child)

Mother: Did you understand the story dear?

Child: yes mama

Mother: What did the crow see?

Child: water!

Mother: Where was the water?

Child: In the jug

Mother: Why could the crow reach the water?

Child: Water …. Mmm…. below…..

 Mother: What did the crow do then?

Child: Put pebbles

Mother: what happened to the water then?

Child: Water… mmm…. Up….

Mother: Yes. Then the crow drank water

Child: The crow was happy mummy

Mother: Yes, the crow was happy after drinking water. Where did the crow go to?

Child: On tree

Mother: Yes, the crow flew away and sat on the tree

17. Categorizing:

It is useful in showing the child relationship between words. The child should
know the concept of each word and this technique helps the child to see the way words
go together, to make sense. It also facilitates the child‟s ability to identify the words in
ways, which makes sense conceptually. By categorizing words as „doers‟,‟ receivers‟ or
„actions‟ for a sentence, the child has a better chance of grasping the meaning.

This technique is also useful in learning the syntax of a language. The grammatical
forms, like indirect and direct sentences, active and passive sentences, can be learnt. If
the child is able to categorize words by their function, she is more likely to comprehend
and produce meaningful sentences. This technique focuses on the child‟s attention
towards the function of different words and word classes. Thus, it prepares the child to
combine words into meaningful relationship in a structural complex level of language
development.

Illustration:

(Mother shows the pictures of apple, biscuit, toffees, plate, spoon, rubber, chalk piece and
pencil)
Mother: Can you see these pictures? Now can you name the things that you can not eat?

Child: Plate, spoon, rubber…..

Mother: Those that you can eat?

Child: Toffee, biscuits, apple….

Mother: Yes. Fine. You know these words like eating, drinking, sleeping….tell you about
actions. Can you tell me a few more?

Child: Ah!...bathing, jumping, hopping, running…..

Mother: Very good.

A NOTE TO THE PARENTS:

The techniques and illustrations outlined here suggest modifications that need to
be made in the type of conversations used by the adults while communicating with their
child. Follow these techniques and see your child chattering in a few months.

GOOD LUCK!!!!!

KUNNAMPALLIL GEJO JOHN

Note: This information took from other source, it‟s really genuine