Phrases in Apraxia Therapy

A frequently asked question in my DM's is, when can I start working on phrases?

In apraxia therapy, we look at building verbal communication skills through improving their speech motor planning skills.  Therefore, it may be more advantageous to teach more single words then to work on phrases, as single words can be just as effective. 

For example, if the child hands his mom his shoes and says "on", the mom will put on the child's shoes.  He does not need to say "put on" in order for his mom to put his shoes on.

Of course we want to work on more complex motor plans and build their language skills by working on phases.  

Here are a few factors to consider before working on phrases:

1) Does the child have a large enough vocabulary to start combining those words into phrases?

2)  Does the child have the foundational skills such as the ability to attend to your face and cueing for a longer period of time to get through the whole phrase?

3) Is the child already trying to combine words and not producing the sounds / movements accurately?

Now.....Let's talk about how I choose my phrases....

Number one tip: Listen to the child! What does that mean? When the child is chatting with you, write down the phrases that the child says frequently, and work on those phrases. 

Here are recent examples of my clients' personal phrases: "here we go", "that's so cute", "maybe soon", "in my soon", "I don't want", "so much fun"

Other times I choose phrases by combining single words that we have worked on in therapy. For example, “put on”, “on top”, “go up”, “I got it”.

⚡️⚡️⚡️ Co-articulating or blending the words in the phrase creates natural sounding speech and improves intelligibility. For the phrase “I do it”, I pronounce it as “I do wit”. We connect the vowel in the word “do” with the word “it” as it sounds natural that way.  Another example, "got it". The final /t/ in the word "got" becomes a /d/ sound and we blend it together as "godit".  

Before you work on a phrase, say it yourself.  In natural conversations the words are often said differently then they are spelled!

Practice phrases during play, as you would at the single word level.

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Click here for a talking video with more explanation about working on phrases.

Here is a link to a therapy video working on phrases using co-articulation.

For more information on co-articulation and working on phrases, click here.