What Is Talkies?

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What steps could we add that would standardize and simplify V/V for children with severe weakness in oral vocabulary and language expression?

  —Nanci Bell & Christy Bonetti, Talkies: Visualizing and Verbalizing for Oral Language Comprehension and Expression

What Is Talkies?

Talkies is a program of instruction to develop the imagery-language connection for young children or students with weak receptive and expressive oral language skills, including those on the autism spectrum.

The goal is to bring mental imagery to a conscious level and to connect that imagery to language, forming the basis of language comprehension and expression.

Talkies is best used as an introduction to the V/V program for students who need simpler, smaller steps of instruction due to limited vocabulary or ability to verbalize.

How is Talkies unique?

The Talkies program aligns with a theory of cognition, Dual Coding Theory, and through sequential steps brings the nonverbal code of imagery to consciousness. The goal is to engage the individual to consciously create and access mental representations and stimulate his or her awareness of the imagery-language connection. Talkies is not intended to diagnose or be an exclusive treatment for speech-language pathology and audiology disorders.

Talkies instruction may benefit students with prior third-party diagnoses of expressive language delays or autism spectrum disorders.

As the sensory information of imagery is brought to consciousness, students can access it as a sensory tool.

 —Nanci Bell & Christy Bonetti, Talkies: Visualizing and Verbalizing for Oral Language Comprehension and Expression

Can Talkies help your student?

Talkies can be used for developmental instruction with very young children, laying a solid foundation for language comprehension and higher order thinking.

An older student is a likely candidate for Talkies instruction if he or she shows:

  • Very limited oral vocabulary, i.e., below the 25th percentile;
  • Substantial weakness in receptive and expressive oral language.

Talkies instruction leads into V/V instruction; older students will likely show signs of weak concept imagery.

How does Talkies instruction help?

Develop the student's ability to…

  • Interact with the instructor through listening, gesturing, and speaking.
  • Use new vocabulary words in association with objects, then pictures, then mental imagery.
  • Form simple sentences.
  • Verbalize descriptions of pictures and imaged nouns.
  • Image and describe simple sentences.
  • Summarize simple stories from sequenced pictures.
  • Image, summarize, and describe simple paragraphs, one sentence at a time.

What does Gander Publishing offer?

We are the publisher and provider of all Talkies products. Browse the selection on our website or contact us for more information.

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