Giving Time to Talk

Conversation goes at a mile a minute. For students who use AAC, entering the stream of conversation is impossible. The average teenager takes seven conversational turns per minute and change topic at the rate of once or twice in a five minute period. The fastest Speech Generating Device (SDG) user may only be able to produce ten words per minute (Howery, 2018).  

Some people think of Stephen Hawkings giving lectures when they think of SGD users. It can be disappointing when an SDG device does not improve the student's communication in class. 

At best, an SGD is 15-25x slower than regular speech (Beukelman & Mirenda, 2013).

In a recent article, Out of Time: The Experience of Speech-Generating Device Users (2018), Howery interviews AAC users and explores what it's like to use AAC every day. Howery gives a few suggestions and hope.

1. Ask your AAC user to come to class with the answer prepared. Call on the student early in the lecure, to deliver the answer and drive the discussion. This goes for conversation as well. Peers can quickly say "Hello," and, "When I see you tomorrow, I want to hear about your weekend."
2. Remove time from communication: encourage messaging and texting with classmates and friends, which allows asynchronous communication.
3. Use online environments for classroom discussion to allow for better reflection and thought in a public forum for all students.

Beukelman, D., & Mirenda, P. (2013). AAC: Supporting children

and adults with CCN (4th ed.). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Howery, K. (2018). Out of Time: The Experience of Speech-Generating Device Users. Communication Disorders Quarterly 2018, Vol. 40(1) 40–49.