Re: Building Conversational Skills

[Guest guest]

Rose,

I feel like our ABA programming is very well set up for building conversation

skills. I will share the steps that our consultant uses. We would start out

verbal prompting until he reached the point where he could do these novelly:

1. Conversation program: Teaching answers to common conversation questions

(ie. How old are you? What's your Mom's name? etc.)

2. Statement-Statement:

examples:

sd: My favorite color is blue r: My favorite color is ____

sd: I have 2 brothers r: I have ___ brothers.

The response can be the same as the sd and then add on " too " .

This program really helped my son when he was having a hard time at preschool.

One of the kids would say something like " I have a Buzz Lightyear " and my son

would exclaim, " NO! I have a Buzz Lightyear " . We worked on this in 1:1 and then

verbal prompt appropriate responses at preschool and it worked like a charm.

3. Statement-Statement-Question: Teacher makes a statement and the child makes

a different statement followed by a question:

sd: I like white cupcakes. r: I like chocolate cupcakes. Do you like

chocolate cupcakes?

sd: I like Clifford Books. r: I like Arthur books. Do you like Arthur books?

4. Statement-Question: We make a statement and then my son would ask a

question about it.

sd: I went to Mcs yesterday. r: What did you eat?

sd: I went to the zoo. r: What animals did you see?

5. Statement Multiple Question: We make a statement and then my son asks a

question. We answer the question (becomes the next sd) and he asks another

question (etc.) When teaching, we used a variety of verbal prompts and would

reinforce after each question (before answering with the next sd). Then we

faded reinforcement until he asked 2-5 questions about the subject.

sd: I went to a birthday party yesterday.

r: Whose birthday party was it?

sd: It was my friend Suzy's party.

r: How old is she?

sd: She is 6.

r: Did you have cake?

sd: Yes. We had chocolate cake.

r: Was it yummy?

sd: Yeah, it was really good.

r: Did you play any games?

6. Rolling Conversations: We are not to this step yet, so I'm afraid I will

not be able to give a worthy explanation. But I do know that you will combine

all of the above. You will start out prompting a statement or a question and

basically prompting the entire conversation.

Hope this helps. It has worked so well for my fun and I have seen him

generalizing in peer plays and at preschool.

Jen

Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 09:08:58 -0800

From: Rose Alford <roseal10@...>

Subject: Building Conversational Skills (are there good drills or instructional

methods?)

Dear Verbal Behavior Experts,

This is a biggie for me: I really want to know some specific drills (tell

me the gory details on how to implement) on how to engage my son (8-years

old, advanced learner according to ABLLS) in more " normal looking "

conversation (no more drills with tedious and rote responses). Anyone have

some magic tricks here?

No more showing him a picture of something and saying " tell me about

(what's in the picture " ) (how boring can it get?) My son is getting so

bored I am surprised he hasn't killed anyone yet.

I need some good ideas to get him to talk about things, and maybe how to

lead him in a conversation that forces him to think about how to

answer. Do you know what I mean by this? I want a nice ongoing

conversation about something, not just rote responses. (I know Carbone

uses videos for this, but, with my son, it will not work as videos are too

over-stimulating for him to answer any questions about them.)

Thanks for any ideas that you can supply me with.

Rose