Aphasia is a speech and language impairment and usually occurs after a stroke in the brain. For many people, this means that they can listen better than talk. Intelligence is usually not affected. 

I decided to take the plunge and approach a current SLP at GF Strong, a rehabilitation centre. GF Strong offers both one-on-one sessions and outpatient group therapy. During the volunteer orientation, a video about aphasia compared it to the “tip-of-the-tongue” feeling. People with aphasia often feel frustrated and confused since they can’t articulate or understand things the way they did before the stroke.

It’s been over a year working with my adult client and I’ve learned some things along the way.  Although my client is able to understand text and conversations, he still has trouble with articulating his thoughts. When he gets stuck, he will usually write or draw what he is trying to convey. The SLP encouraged me to try and engage in a lot of conversation with my client.

Here are some of the exercises and activities that we’ve done:

 

Reading Stories

The sessions with my lovely client consists of reading a short story from an adult reading series. The SLP provided the stories for us. At the end of our last session, I would give him next week’s story to read and answer the exercises. For instance, multiple choice questions about the story, antonym/synonym relationships, fill in the blanks, etc. 

In the beginning, I ask him to give me a general summary of the story. I usually ask the 5 W’s (Who, what, where, when, why) and get him to expand his explanation. Sometimes he would stumble on the words, but I wait and correct him as we go along. We take turns reading one paragraph at a time. After the story, we go over the exercises and check his answers. For the questions where he got something wrong, we would go over it. I try to ask him questions to lead him to understand the answer.

reading book

 

Newspaper articles

Sometimes, I browse through free newspapers and find interesting articles that my client might like. Then, I would photocopy the article (one for me, one for my client). I try to avoid any political or long articles for obvious reasons. During our sessions, we would take turns reading each paragraph. Afterwards, I would ask the client to give a quick summary. We would then take turns asking questions from the article, usually 3 turns each. I think it’s just as important to build the ability to answer and ask questions. If he gets stuck about what to ask, I remind him to try and use one of the 5 W’s (this definitely comes up a lot).

Eventually, we reverted to verbal conversation where I would ask him about any news stories that he’s heard lately. He would answer any questions that I ask. If I read something interesting in the news, then I would give one sentence about the story and wait. This way, he gets to ask questions as well.

newspaper

 

Wordless Stories

I got this idea while I was helping to test bilingual students in schools. One of these tests involved using a wordless story about a toad. A quick search online and I found some wordless stories that I could scroll and show my client. It really helped him with describing a situation. They’re also great for questioning and clarifying scenes in the story. I encouraged him to use more sentences to describe the scene and asked questions. With some prompting, he was able to say longer utterances!

Here are some PDFs of free online wordless stories:

 

Taboo

Although I didn’t have the actual game on hand, I wanted to see if there was one online. Lo and behold, there’s an online version! I knew that that task would be a little difficult so I worked with him to try describe the first word without using the five related words related underneath. Once he got the hang of it, I started as the one describing the words and he would guess. Then when it was his turn for him to describe, I was so proud that he described it enough for us to play a few rounds! When he was a little stuck on a description, I would start asking questions to help or resort to pen and paper.

taboo

Of course, every person is different and these ideas might not all be appropriate, but feel free to use some of these ideas if you volunteer with a patient who has Aphasia. If you don’t have one yet, look for opportunities such as the GF Strong Program or a similar program near you!