Tasks of ICT in speech therapy
Computer games in speech therapy are not only children's entertainment. They help solve a number of important problems:
- improvement of motor coordination and fine motor skills;
- spatial orientation training;
- speech correction;
- increasing vocabulary;
- training of HMF (higher mental functions);
- teaching a child to use a computer.
All of the listed tasks can be accomplished either using one game or by selecting several and alternating them. It is thanks to their versatility that speech simulators are becoming increasingly popular.
Recommendations for their use
It is impossible to use only ICT (information computer technologies) in speech therapy classes, because it harms vision and the child may get tired of working with the computer, even if he plays on it. By following certain recommendations, their use will be productive and will not harm your health:
- It is enough to use 1-2 didactic games, the duration of which will not exceed 5 minutes.
- You need to choose in accordance with the goals and lexical topic of the lesson.
- Their use is effective at the stages of automation and differentiation.
- The distance between the screen and eyes should be at least 50 cm.
- When playing, the child should have a straight back.
- After completing it, you should do a short exercise.
Speech therapy games on the computer should facilitate the correction process and make it more productive, increasing the child’s interest in learning. But without causing harm to health and without developing dependence on the computer. Therefore, it is important for a speech therapist to find a balance between the use of modern technologies and classic didactic games.
Is that also correct? Programs and websites that will make your speech more literate
The way we express our thoughts says even more about us than our clothing style, assures Dmitry Kolomatsky, a researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a big fashionista. At our request, he tested popular programs and mobile applications for checking texts in Russian and English.
K.P. Stepanov. "Letter". 1893
We seem to have become accustomed to choosing what we eat and even thinking about what we wear. A completely definite opinion is formed about a person who appears in the same suit for the fifth day in a row. What about those who speak and write incorrectly?
““Are you going home?” I once said to the writer Osipovich, saying goodbye to him on the street. He replies: “Not at all!” How can I explain to him that they don’t say that in Russian? He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t feel: “How should I say it?” In your opinion, not at all? But what’s the difference?’” The bad mood of Bunin, who wrote this almost 100 years ago, is understandable: revolution is no fun. But even without it, of course, it’s annoying when it’s correct to say “not at all”, but everyone around says “not at all” - and is proud of it.
We began to understand the intricacies of style: which scarf goes with what, what socks should be worn with blue trousers and brown shoes, whether it is possible to wear a button-down shirt with a tie (there is fierce debate). But we continue to say “I think what” and put a soft sign so often that it’s time to completely cancel it (just in case). But the way we express our thoughts says even more about us than our clothing style.
It must be admitted, however, that there are more conventions in the linguistic norm. Nowadays it is considered correct to say “smokes” with the emphasis on the first syllable, and “calls” - on the second. Many people have doubts about “drilling” (spoiler: also on the second one). Meanwhile, previously the only correct option was to stress the second syllable in all three cases. Stressing a word incorrectly doesn't raise your cholesterol, make you fat, or shift your waistline: it's a bit like not knowing the rules of the game. If you come to a billiard club and make it clear that you know about plant and fluke, your weight goes up (not physical, God forbid). If your colleague understands that you distinguish between “not” and “neither,” he will write to you: “We are intelligent people,” and will not end this phrase with something obscene. When I was a translator, I conducted a rapid test of hotel staff for myself: many pronounced the word “suite” as “suite” (the same suit, only with one more letter, what’s the problem?), although the correct word is “suite”. " Any guest will understand that they are not offering the services of an atelier, but pronounce this word correctly and the impression will be completely different.
Let's immediately rule out intentional rudeness. If you don’t say hello in a letter, don’t address them by name, don’t say goodbye, and in the most extreme case (in a letter to the chairman of the board of directors) squeeze out “plz” - this is the same as walking down the street in flip-flops, swim shorts and fishnets. T-shirt, defiantly throwing cans and cigarette butts onto the asphalt. In this case, studying spelling and punctuation is unnecessary and useless. Are there any among us? Not at all (one more repetition and you will remember this forever). So: you want to write and speak correctly. How to achieve this?
George Goodwin Kilburn. "Love letter"
In addition to the banal “read books” (the same advice as “eat less” in the section “Lose weight without worries”), you can recommend very specific things. You know that you are having problems with some difficult cases. “Not” or “nor”, “that” or “whatever”, “like” or “like”, “also” and “as well”. Deal with this issue once, spend time, go to the Gramota.ru portal, which I use constantly. For the English language - for example, the Cambridge Dictionary website, where there is even a special section dedicated to complex cases. Then figure out a way to remember it so you don’t forget it again. The brighter and more individual, the better. About that same hotel room, you might think that it is sweet and pleasant, and you will no longer call it a “suite”. We must, ashamedly, admit that some indecent analogies work best (I can give an example, but I won’t). If you don’t rely on mnemonics, install a memorization app on your smartphone and just repeat it from time to time. There are a lot of programs of this kind: for example, for iOS - Eidetic or Memorize It, for Android - AnyMemo. You ask yourself a question, write the answer yourself - and learn whatever you want.
You can also download a couple of games: instead of collecting colorful balls in a row, play spelling and punctuation. That is, in “Spelling” and “Punctuation”, which are available for both Android (,) and iOS (,). Regarding English, this is a separate topic, since we will already be talking about applications for learning foreign languages.
There is, however, a big problem: you may not know that you don’t know something. If you didn’t even realize that there is a difference between a hyphen and a dash, that it is correct to write “25th” (and not “25th”) and “25-story” (and not the wild “25-story”, where many manage also insert a space), - you will not learn the correct option. You don’t even suspect that yours may be incorrect. The advice here is simple: doubt yourself more often, do not brush aside feelings of uncertainty or difficult cases. Check it once and remember it so you don’t forget (or add “Certificate” to the quick launch panel). Unfortunately, there is no great hope for the media: now even news agencies make spelling mistakes.
If you need to proofread your text right now, but don’t have time for the torment of introspection, there are many services that proofread what you’ve written for you. Of course, it will be far from ideal and not always free, but it's better than nothing. If you spend time on at least this, your counterparty will not ask the eternal rhetorical question: “Didn’t they think that real people would read this?!”
When it comes to simple spell checking, it’s not even entirely clear why you should use third-party services - Word, an email program, and Google keyboard will check your spelling for you. But if you wish, you can, for example, enter texts into the services of the Artemy Lebedev Studio (Orthograf) or Yandex (Speller, which can be embedded on any website). It is more interesting to look at projects that offer to check commas with periods. This is, for example, LanguageTool, which claims to check spelling and punctuation in 30 languages at once. But LanguageTool cannot cope with complex cases. In the example below, he found only one error (how many did you find?).
The paid service "Spelling" promises to detect even the simplest punctuation errors. In the proposed example, it also works with participial phrases, but I doubt that it will cope with the phrase “whatever happens”: it is ambiguous, and you really need to understand the text in order to recognize the error.
Another free resource, Text.ru, whose main task is to check texts for uniqueness (it deals with spelling and punctuation part-time), also found only one error.
Therefore - alas and ah - complex cases of spelling and punctuation will have to be mastered on your own.
But the style, which so often suffers, can be checked. For this purpose, there is the “Glavred” project, which finds unnecessary words, too heavy phrases or clerical cliches in the text. A great tool for cleaning up a business letter or company description on a website!
For the English language, as one might expect, text checking services are more than sufficient. One of the most popular, judging by reviews and reviews, is Grammarly. It is available in both free and paid versions. The paid version not only checks spelling and grammar rules, but also analyzes sentence structure and style, as well as the originality of the text. Works as a standalone application or plugin for Word and Chrome. Free Grammarly does not find all errors.
On the list of the most popular you can also find the cross-platform product Ginger. It comes as a program for Windows, browser plugins, and mobile apps for iOS and Android, with not only the paid main Ginger Page app available for Android, but also the free Ginger Keyboard, which supports 60 languages. The online trial version did even worse with my clumsy example than Grammarly, but it should work better with simple cases (or for money).
If you're already a decent writer and just want to polish up the details, try the free Slick Write service. It is completely unsuitable for checking such illiterate sentences as mine, but it is quite suitable for analyzing style. For example, it will tell you that the text is overloaded with adverbs or that two sentences in a row begin with the same pronoun. High-level stuff, so to speak.
Just as successfully as Grammarly, the most unprepossessing site among those that fall into the recommendations of professionals, PaperRater, dealt with my terrible text. The online service has a free (with limited functionality) and paid version. It's unlikely to win the People's Choice Award for design, but it cleans up the pretexts well. However, everything else remains.
In general, I have the impression that the typical mistakes of Russian-speaking authors of business correspondence, desperately trying to literally translate Russian sentences into English, are too much for unfortunate online services to cope with. You will still have to do some of the work yourself. Oddly enough, what often helps me with this is not even a dictionary, but a simple Google search engine: when I doubt which phrase sounds more natural in English, I look for it in the news. If my phrase is often used by the authors of messages on the feed of a Vietnamese news agency, this is a sign that you need to look for something better (nothing personal!). If a columnist for The Guardian writes the same thing, that’s it, you have to take it! Remember that competent speech consists primarily not of advanced vocabulary units, but of elegantly and clearly constructed simple phrases. If you read the English-language press, pick out some good phrases for yourself (without the right collocations, there can be no literate English speech), memorize them using mobile applications. At some point, when writing a letter to a foreign partner, you may discover that for some reason your intuition tells you this particular adjective and not another, this particular preposition and this word order. This is a good sign.
The main thing is to remember that your task is not to show your language proficiency (whether Russian or English), but to make sure that you are understood. Realize that this is a living person in front of you, whom it is not good to torture at the end of the working day. Competent speech is not narcissism, but caring for one’s neighbor. If you express your thoughts clearly without using clichéd phrases (which simply stop your thinking), you demonstrate respect for the interlocutor and for yourself. You dressed well, you smell nice - now say something pleasant and literate. Forget “that”, forget “also”, and at the same time the terrible “I’m expecting catalogs with new products from you by fax”. Is it difficult? Not at all.
