Morgan James Publishing The Teaching of Talking: Learn to Do Expert Speech Therapy at Home With Children and Adults

If you are a caregiver of a PWA (Person With Aphasia) who has moderate to severe aphasia, this book should be extremely helpful if you want to maximize their progress. Ittleman indicates if a PWA can imitate even single words and understands what you are saying, his method should be effective. This is true even if a person also has apraxia, though profound apraxia will probably first require other methods. Although a chapter is devoted to working on mild aphasia, and it's a good chapter, the rest of the book is more appropriate for more significant aphasia issues. What I've Gotten Out of this Book: 1. Stimulate speech whenever you are together during the day. (My own Caveat: amount and timing need to be finessed so it's enough but not too much for you both.) 2. Relax. Have fun. Use humor. 3. If your PWA is willing to work, they'll improve. 4. Be conscious of what you're stimulating for in terms of lengths of sentences. 5. Be aware of the need to slow down and enunciate slowly, especially words with more syllables. 6. Start easy. Work step by step for success at each step before making things more difficult. 7. Learn what mistakes to ignore. 8. Give your PWA positive feedback. If there are errors, rather than draw attention to them, suggest they try again. This book is all practical. It's written so anyone should be able to understand. There is really no theory to get bogged down with. There are a lot of examples that anyone should be able to relate to. In addition, you're encouraged to work with relevant content, and especially in the beginning, words, phrases, or sentences that refer to your immediate environment. If you are working with a therapist, hopefully, they've read this book and can help you put it into practice. If you aren't working with a therapist, you should probably be able to do much of what is suggested simply by reading the book. If this seems too much of a challenge, Ittleman's website, should be helpful including his videos. And he's also willing to either consult on-line with you or even answer your emailed queries. He's dedicated to spreading the work of how to do successful work on aphasia in your own home. I wish this book had been available three years ago when my husband had his stroke and could hardly say anything. He has had lots of speech therapy, including an intensive program, and all have been helpful. But Ittleman's methods have truly seemed to make the most difference. We have chosen to also do some consulting time with him. For us, this works well, and his charges are reasonable, especially given the time and effort he puts into lesson planning, notes to you, and answers to emails. But for those of you who do well with applying material straight from a book, the book, with perhaps some emailed inquiries and looking at his site, should be enormously helpful. Finally, this book doesn't address reading and writing issues. It focuses entirely on speech. If your PWA is like my husband and having difficulties with all three, it's probably better for quality of life for both of you to focus on speech. I guess exceptions would be if they seem to have more potential or interest in writing or reading than in speaking.

We purchased this book and whole program. Mark Ittleman goes slowly and methodically, but reminds us to not just ask stupid questions. E.g. What colour pen is this? Who cares?? We talk to our son about what is interesting to him, and really spend time trying to help him verbalize his thoughts. Thank you so much to him! This isn't just for stroke victims, but children born with speech impediments (aphasia/apraxia).

Do you want to help someone with aphasia? This is the book for you! An experienced speech therapist who knows what a difference fun, working together and constant friendly reinforcement from the people who love someone with aphasia can make, Mark Ittleman is a real enthusiast. This book shows you clearly what to do. If you want to know more before you buy go to teachingoftalking.com where you can really find out what it is all about.

This book has helped change our lives for the better. Diagnosed with Aphasia makes it very difficult to communicate. While on paper I looked bad, in person you could see myself trying to communicate. My wife decided to take matters into her own hands when the speech pathologist said she could no longer work with me. She found this book, took me to another speech pathologist who also bought the book, then along with Mark Ittleman the three of them devised a plan to teach me how to talk. 6 months later I am now 88% communicable!!! We focused on functional speaking rather than the whole totality that normally comes with speech therapy. Get the book, follow the teachings, make it fun, you will find the frustration level come down along with increased communication skills.

I wish I knew before hand that it’s not recommended for ALL non verbal / minimally verbal kids. The beginning of the book indicates who the book could help and who it may not be able to help. For instance if the child isn’t mimicking your actions then I wouldn’t recommend it.