6 Forms of Facilitative Talk for Toddlers and Early Preschoolers
Facilitative talk
Facilitative talk is an advanced form of Motherese designed for toddlers or early preschoolers (ages 2;0 to about 3;6) who are too young to benefit from direct instruction.
Facilitative talk is essentially Motherese for an older child. This term is used to distinguish it from Motherese used with infants. Some people may prefer to call it toddler Motherese, advanced Motherese, or simply Motherese—the name is less important than what it does.
Facilitative talk offers a means to facilitate speech and language for a child not yet old enough to benefit from direct instruction.
Facilitative talk includes:
Strategic errors
Modeling*
Bombardment*
Requests for confirmation or clarification
Parallel talk*
Expansions*
Facilitative talk comes from studies of how families naturally teach language to their children. In this book, they are adapted into tools to promote speech development.
*most commonly used forms of facilitative talk
Therapy Ingredients
Think of forms of facilitative talk as therapy ingredients that you select from and alter to fit a specific child's needs.
To illustrate, one child may benefit from a combination of parallel talk and strategic errors, while another may respond better to expansions. To continue the cooking analogy, some ingredients find more general use than other ingredients.
Forms of facilitative talk with wide use include
modeling, bombardment, expansions, and parallel talk.
Tips for Parents
Just like with infant Motherese, many families naturally use facilitative talk with their toddlers without needing any special instruction. If a family requests assistance, work together to discover which techniques seem most compatible with their interactive styles, and then practice facilitative talk together with the child. If a family's request is for general suggestions about talking with a toddler, you might offer the following:
Interact often and, when you do, talk about what you and your child are doing and seeing.
Focus more on what your child says than how they say it.
Speak in short simple sentences about the here and now.
Talk about what seems to interest your child.
Encourage your child to communicate through "using your words."
. Have fun. Stay away from drills and rote memorization.
Avoid extensive use of electronic teachers (videos, movies, and television), which do not change their messages based on your child's response.
6 Forms of Facilitative Talk
Strategic Error
A strategic error focuses a child on speech — not something easy to achieve in a toddler or early preschooler who seldom seems aware of speech matters. Strategic errors, as adapted here for speech treatment, do this by mimicking aspects of a child's speech disorder. If, for example, a child pronounces word-intial [t] as [d], a clinician might point to a toy and say, “doy.” The hoped response is that the child looks confused or laughs. Sometimes, along with a confused look or laugh, a strategic error elicits a speech production.
FATHER: This is my favorite doy.
Child smiles.
FATHER: I love my doy.
CHILD: Toy.
Modeling
Modeling, as the name suggests, provides a child an example of a speech element. For example, an adult might model [t] in tea while they play with a toy kitchen set.
ADULT: Would you like some more tea?
CHILD: Yes, please.
ADULT: Tea is good. Do you like tea?
CHILD: Yes.
ADULT: Would you like toast with your tea?
CHILD: Yes.
ADULT: Mmm. This is good toast. Toast and tea taste so good together.
Bombardment
Bombardment increases the relative frequency of a treatment sound. The logic behind this form of facilitative talk is that a child tends to learn earlier what they heard more often (Maye, Weiss, & Aslin, 2008).
Bombardment places no production demands on a child. Bombardment is like preparing the soil for future planting — providing exposure to a treatment sound in meaningful naturalistic contexts, readying a child to say it when the time is right. The following brief dialogue demonstrates bombardment of words ending in nasal consonants while an adult and child eat lunch.
ADULT: This peanut butter is so yum. So yum.
Child nods.
ADULT: Sandwiches are so fun. Aren't they fun?
Child nods.
ADULT: What other fun things can we do? Would you like to play out in the sun?
Child smiles.
ADULT: Let's do it. The sun is so warm today. This will be fun.
Requests for Confirmation or Clarification
Requests for confirmation or clarification focus a child's attention on speech for communication. The following dialogue demonstrates a request for clarification for a child who pronounces [k] as [t] as an adult shows a child a small box with a lock.
ADULT: I bet there are fun things inside the box. Think so?
CHILD: Maybe.
ADULT: How do you open a locked box?
CHILD: With a tea.
ADULT: With a tea? I thought you drank tea.
Child laughs.
Requests for confirmations and clarifications require some care, since, if overused, a child may "shut down" and either speak less or resort to pointing. A possible sidestep around this is for a puppet or doll to ask questions, as in the following slight alternation of the preceding dialogue.
ADULT: I bet there are fun things inside the box. Think so?
CHILD: Maybe.
ADULT: Puppet, how do you open a locked box?
PUPPET: With a tea
ADULT: With a tea? I thought you drank tea.
PUPPET: I meant a key.
ADULT: That's right. With a key.
Parallel Talk
Parallel talk narrates a child's activities and interests, providing a verbal description of what captures the child's attention for the moment.
Parallel talk supports the well-known truth that a child acquires words that refer to things and actions they find interesting. The following sequence demonstrates the adaptation of parallel talk to facilitate [d] in dog
The child picks up a toy dog.
CLINICIAN: Doggy.
The child pets the dog.
CLINICIAN: Nice doggy. So cuddly.
The child kisses the toy dog.
CLINICIAN: Ohhh... Sweet dog.
Expansions
As adapted here for speech treatment, expansions "fill in the missing speech parts." The following brief dialogue shows its use to facilitate word final consonants as a child picks up a book and hands it to the adult.
CHILD: Boo.
ADULT: Book.
The child opens the book and points to a picture of a pig.
CHILD: Pi.
ADULT: Pig. Yes. It's a pig.