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