Parents' Corner
Learning to Ask Questions
When my verbal kids were around 3 or 4, they used to drive me nuts asking questions all day long. “Why?” “When will we….?” “How come?” The questions came hard and fast, with little or no teaching on my part.
Now, I am struggling to teach my youngest two sons a skill that I never had to teach the other boys: how to ask a question. Since this is something that we are experiencing at our house, I imagine that many of the rest of you may also be trying to make this happen for your children, as well, so I am going to write about it in hopes that this can provide some clues to other parents.
Asking a question is a little like initiating a conversation (you’ll see an article on that in the archives). However, in addition to deciding what to say, when making a question HOW to say it also is a concern.
When we put together questions in English, we change the order of the words we use. If I say “I can swim,” it is a statement of fact. But if I switch those same words around, I make a question “Can I swim?” Often, kids that use AAC miss the subtleties of this.
And then, when asking a question, we use different questions words depending on the answer we want to get. If I want to know about time, I use the word “when”. If I want to know a location, I use the word “Where”. I don’t ask “Where will we go?” If I want to know what time we will leave, or no one will be able to answer the question in my mind, we’ll all be confused, and if I can’t figure out how to fix the situation I might throw a tantrum (or at least wish I could)!
Asking a question is tougher than you might at first think! Here are the skills that are involved:
1. understanding that word order makes a difference in the meaning of a sentence.
2. Knowing that to pick the right question word, I need to have in mind the kind of answer I want.
3. Associating each of the question words with the type of answer I will get.
4. and the final skill: actually putting together the question on the AAC system.
Let’s take each of these separately.How can we help our kids to understand that word order makes a difference? We can play “question or comment”. Ask the child to tell you if what you just said is a question or a comment. We can do this verbally, using written words, or written words with pictures from the device. Why not try all 3? When learning this skill, our goal is for the child to understand what a question sounds like and that when a question is asked, someone has to answer it. As children get better at this, they can say the comment or question on their AAC system, with as much help from you as they need. Then you respond to the comment, “oh, that’s nice, etc” or answer the question. By responding to the comment or question, you are modeling the different ways we answer when the word order is different.
Another way we can help kids understand that word order makes a difference is find a way to make it visual. Using an aided language board, a few beads and a pipe cleaner, we can provide a visual aide to help get the words in order. The pipe cleaner and beads serve as a touchable reminder of what we are planning to do with our words. As a substitute for the beads and pipe cleaners (which I can’t put online for you) I have made a color chart showing several possible sentence combos.(see the end of the article) The color coding on this activity is based on the Fitzgerald key, which is the basis of color coding for a variety of AAC systems. If needed, colors can be changed to match your child’s AAC system. If you like, feel free to add symbols to your aided language board.
I like to do this in the context of a conversation. For example, this can be done to communicate about a story you just read together. While this article focuses on using this method to teach children to ask questions, you can also use it to teach other types of sentences.
1. Choose a simple sentence structure to practice from the list of color codes provided. (feel free to make up your own color codes as desired)
2. While looking at the sentence structure sample, choose a word from each of the color coded columns to match the color code you chose. You can either slide on a bead after you choose the word, or make the bead pattern ahead of time and touch the proper color as you choose words.
3. Be aware that it is possible to build a sentence that doesn’t make sense. If this happens, let the child determine if the sentence makes sense, should be changed or simply needs more words.
4. Cheer once a sentence that communicates something is made! For beginning questioners, perfections isn’t as important as getting your meaning across.“Pretend beads”---sample sentence patterns: note the red ones use question words
I always value your feedback. parents@aacinstitute.org.
