Word Finding Difficulties and the Importance of Vocabulary-Learning.

It happens to us all, ‘it’ll come to me in a minute’, ‘it’s on the tip of my tongue’, everybody has a degree of word finding difficulties sometimes. This can be exacerbated by life’s stresses such as lack of sleep , too much homework or heavy workload.

Word finding difficulties are when a child cannot retrieve the word they want to say, but know what they are talking about. Some learners may describe the word or use a less meaningful word than the one they're trying to describe.

What can you do to help?

Encourage your child to:

• Practice key vocabulary, at AHSC we use a the Word Aware approach to vocabulary acquisition/ consolidation (speak to your child’s Speech and Language Therapist for more information)

• Describe the word using its properties e.g. (what does it look like? what is it made of?)

• Give them choices based on categories e.g. (Is it something you eat for dinner or dessert?

• Give your child sentences that they need to finish e.g. it’s red, it's sweet and it grows on trees…it’s a..

• Think about how the word is structured e.g. what sound does it begin with, how long or short is the word.

For more information on Word Aware follow this link: http://thinkingtalking.co.uk/word-aware/

Laurenn Faucher, Speech and Language Therapist/ Equality and Diversity Champion