Teaching Strategy #17: The Art of Speaking and the Language Master

Rhetoric was known as the “art of speaking” among the ancient Greeks and Romans. There’s more than a little rhetoric that gets used (cast around) in discussions/debates about autism and causes, vaccines, cures, treatments.

This post is about something else. It is about the “art of speaking,” but not the rhetoric of the ancients, or of those more modern. It’s about what I have to call the “art” of teaching, helping, Charlie to speak.

We really did not know if Charlie could talk when he was much younger. Every sound, every syllable, word, every sort of word-like utterance Charlie produced was remarked upon, noted, discussed, gently encouraged. However, under any kind of pressure, Charlie was (we soon learned) much less likely to say what he’d said again or to speak at all. To this day, Charlie often says a few words or a whole sentence clear as anything on his own, spontaneously. But ask him to repeat it and a look of concentration comes over his eyes and forehead and he moves his mouth muscles deliberately as he tries to talk, and whatever it was he just said comes out half-enunciated, or not at all.

“Say [this].” “Say [that].” How many times over these past ten years has Charlie heard that little word “say,” and has he sometimes responded? Sometimes we have marveled that everything Charlie said did not start with say (”say hi say how are you say I’m fine say thank you say I’m say Charlie say Fisher”).

When Charlie was just over nine years old and had started attending school in the public school autism program in the town where we currently live, his teachers started to teach him to use a Language Master. That’s the beige machine with the blue and red and green buttons above. You can record a word or phrase or sentence onto a card with a magnetic strip at the bottom. Charlie was taught to run the card through the machine and imitate the phrase, and thereby to speak without someone reminding him “say [this].”

Over time, his teachers put together the various cards with the phrases he’d learned to say into a book; a photo and a small flashcards of whatever was recorded on the card with the magnetic strip was velcroed to each page of a book-size binder. The book contains Charlie’s schedule of activities and lessons throughout the school day; prior to doing each, he takes out the card, runs the strip through the Language Master, tells his teacher what he is doing, puts the card back, and does Addition or File Folders or Fitness or OT or whatever he is to do.

Just this afternoon, Charlie’s teacher came to our house with a book for after school activities (that’s the book on the left in the photo above): Gradually he’ll learn to go through the pages in the book and put away his backpack and coat and lunchbox and homework folder, have a snack, practice piano, play a game (Zingo today), do a puzzle (67 pieces at Jigzone—nothing really—Charlie’s teacher says he does ones with 100 pieces at school), and ask for “free time.” And all while talking.

Of course, the language that Charlie learns from using the Language Master and the cards is somewhat rote. He occasionally says some of the phrases without the machine but the bigger effect of using it has been indirect: Using the Language Master has the indirect effect of just getting Charlie to talk more, and without us asking him to.

Charlie’s teachers also use little voice recorders to remind him to speak, or of what to say, without them having to tell him to. Teaching Charlie to talk is a bit of an “art” in itself.