Browsing by Author "Takala, Jenni"

The aim of this study is to examine speech-language therapists’ evaluations after the clients’ responses in naming exercises in order to unpack the actions and structures of evaluations on interaction in the speech-language therapy of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Especially evaluations during exercises after the client’s response are significant when supporting the client’s learning, even though feedback can be included in many stages of therapy. Previous studies of speech-language therapy interaction have mostly focused on therapy interaction generally, or on feedback in adults’ speech-language therapy, but research on evaluations in children’s speech-language therapy are still very few. At the moment the speech-language therapists’ knowledge of therapy interaction and evaluative actions is mainly empirical. Detailed analysis and knowledge of feedback would benefit speech therapists’ and speech therapy students’ ability to analyse their own evaluative actions, and ability to help parents to improve their interaction skills with their child. The method used in this study was conversation analysis developed by sociologists Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. The data consisted of 10 videotapes of DLDs speech-language therapy, filmed by Tuula Tykkyläinen for her doctoral thesis in late 1990s. Naming tasks with third turn feedback from 10 therapy videos were included in this study. Subjects were four speech-language therapists and five children ages 5;0 - 6;0. The naming and feedback sequences were transcribed in detail, and the feedback actions and structures were analysed. The frequencies of feedback structures were counted. With feedback actions speech-language therapists either approved the child’s naming response, or in case of incorrect responses, helped the child to produce correction or produced themselves the correct naming. There were found structural similarities in the feedback turns and ways speech-language therapists facilitate learning and the interaction between the speech-language therapist and the client. The post-expansions of feedback turns were also found to be significant in the rehabilitation of naming along feedback turns. The results mainly confirm previous findings and increase the knowledge on speech-language therapists’ evaluations. The results help observation and conceptualization of evaluative actions especially in the speech-language therapy of children with DLD.