Receptive and Expressive Language in Speech Therapy
Hi Friends!
Let's chat about receptive and expressive language and how it relates to language.
While it may seem like a stretch, just stick with me here.
One thing I've noticed is that often, as speech therapists, we emphasize how children NEED to understand a concept fully before they can utilize it. This is a foundation for our therapy in Early Intervention and something I'm sure all of you have had to explain to parents numerous times.
But then, we get to school-age speech clients and seem to forget this.
In the words of the Backstreet Boys,
TELL ME WHY?
What am I talking about?
USING RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE SKILLS IN THERAPY
Let's take grammar for this example!
From my SLP friend's experiences, most therapists jump right in: we teach about all the different types of verb tenses, regular and irregular plurals, and all those pronouns. We review punctuation and capitalization for writing. We go through all the steps then….
THE KIDS CANNOT GENERALIZE THE SKILLS TO WRITING 🥲
Wait, what just happened?!
You reviewed the skill, you practiced, but then you assessed for their ability with a writing assignment and it all went downhill. We've all been there! Time to take a step back.
BRING IN RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE!
Next time, before you break out the paper and pencils, do a therapy exercise aimed at their receptive language understanding of these concepts. This is going to look a lot like an assessment, but instead of the child taking the reins on writing using these concepts, let them point to the correct tenses or correct plurals and capitalization in pre-written sentences. (You may need to practice this a while before they can start showing their mastery of these skills in their expressive language-whether that be written, typed, or spoken. )
HOW DOES THIS HELP?
These low-demands tasks help a child understand the concept fully, which is what they need to do before they can express it! It will also give you great insight into where the breakdown happens with their understanding. There's a lot of components that go into using grammar (or other concepts too!) such as the burden of writing, cognitive processes, etc. that make grammar difficult to remember unless the skill is REALLY cemented.
WANT RESOURCES TO GO WITH THIS THERAPY MODEL?
I love this digital grammar tool to tackle grammar goals. It has both receptive and expressive models for teaching, so the grammar skills are truly understood before we move on to higher level tasks, like classroom generalization!
Happy speeching!
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