Using Speech Therapy Apps to Treat Mild Aphasia

Talking (also known as verbal, spoken, or oral expression) includes thinking of the words you want to say and saying them.

• Mild-Moderate: Can speak to anyone, but isn’t always able to get the message across clearly.
• Mild: Able to communicate effectively in most everyday situations, but occasionally has word-finding problems or difficulty expressing complex ideas.

Understanding (aka spoken, listening, or auditory comprehension) is the ability to make sense of what you hear.

• Mild-Moderate: Understands most conversations with anyone, but complicated ideas may require restating or written supports.
• Mild: Able to follow complex directions and understand most conversations, but occasionally has difficulty with work or social activities in large groups or for complex sentences.

Writing, or written expression, is the ability to put words into written form. This can be through handwriting, printing, or typing and requires spelling skills.

• Mild-Moderate: Can write sentences, but needs help with paragraphs, complex sentences, and challenging words.
• Mild: Can write paragraphs, but may need to use strategies or tools to help. Difficulties may still be noticed in work-related writing or for more complex ideas.

Reading is making sense of the written word. Oral reading (aka reading aloud) is a different skill from reading comprehension, but both skills can be affected by aphasia.

• Mild-Moderate: Reads simple sentences well, but needs help with complex sentences and paragraphs.
• Mild: Reads most things well, but it takes longer than usual and is tiring.

Advanced Comprehension Therapy

This app challenges your listening comprehension, attention, and working memory to ensure you’re truly understanding what you hear. All 3 activities can be made more challenging by selecting only the hardest levels.

Identify: Set the Mode to Listen, and select Levels 5-11 to match the sentence you hear to a picture.

Build: Switch the Audio Prompt off and ensure Extra Words is set to 3. Select Levels 9-20 to assemble the words to form a sentence that matches the picture you see.

Follow: Set the Mode to Listen, and select Levels 5-16 to follow the most challenging directions.

PRO TIP: After doing your first session of each activity, take a look at the reports. Next time, focus only on the levels on which you scored less than 90% accuracy.

Advanced Naming Therapy

This app challenges your ability to think of specific words, organize ideas, and improve both speed and fluency of word-finding. Here’s how to max out the difficulty in each of the 4 activities for verbal expression:

Create: This activity is based on the VNeST protocol and is already quite difficult. Push yourself to think of very precise Who and What nouns to go with each verb. So instead of saying “I miss my sister,” try “the batter missed the pitch” or “the commuter missed the train” to get at the heart of what the verb means and explore various meanings. Change the verb conjugation by touching the button under the verb.

Compare: Try Level 2: Variations to work on precise descriptive vocabulary as you compare and contrast similar items, then move away from pictures to Level 3: Concrete Concepts and the super-hard Level 4: Abstract Concepts. Push yourself to organize your ideas before speaking them. Concisely define each concept, highlighting the key similarities and differences. Write your answers down in short paragraphs to mimic school essays and focus on clarity of communication.

Describe: Time for a bit of fun as you verbally describe some unusual pictures. Try the Idioms category to work on figurative language, and put words in someone else’s mouth with the Conversations and Thoughts categories.

Generate: Try to name as many words as you can in a minute (or 2 or 3), or try to name 10 or 15 words without a timer. All the categories can be challenging, but if you can master Rhymes, Synonyms, or Starts with Prefix, you’re a linguistic champion!

BONUS: Timed Fluency Tests offer a way to track your progress by taking them at the beginning and end of your therapy and comparing your results to the standardized scores in the report.

Advanced Reading Therapy

Practice reading with tests of comprehension at 3 different levels. Start with Level 2 (50-150 words at a Grade 2-3 reading level with 4 quiz questions), then adjust up to Level 3 or down to Level 1 based on how you find it. Here’s how to get more challenge out of this app:

Read Aloud: Read each passage out loud to work both your reading and speaking skills while you try to retain the information for comprehension.

Listen: If auditory comprehension is the problem, don’t look at the screen. Simply hit Play and listen to the passage. Then look at the screen again to answer the quiz questions.

Look Up Words: Change the Touch to Hear Words setting to Regular Selection to access the built-in dictionary tool when you select a word you don’t know. This feature of the tablet can be used in most apps and browsers, and will help you be more independent in understanding new words.

Carry On: If you enjoy the book chapters in Levels 2 and 3, you can keep reading these free books in the public domain online. Links are available in the User Guide.

Advanced Writing Therapy

The activities are organized from easiest on the left to hardest on the right, but there are challenging aspects to each activity. Here’s how to make each activity harder:

Match: Adjust the Difficulty to Hard. Select all Levels so you’ll get a variety of sounds to match to letters and a baseline report. Focus on the levels on which you score below 90% to strengthen your ear.

Spell: Turn off the 2-, 3-, and 4- letter words so you can work on typing longer words (e.g. important, sometimes, example), focus the category of Irregular Words (e.g. aisle, debt, height), or hone in on the Little Words categories (e.g. have, those, for) if that’s where you struggle.

Type: Select Levels 5-8 for the longest sentences to type. For example, you’ll hear, “go straight until you pass the school” and then type it out. Listen as many times as you want, slow it down, or see the text to copy it if this is too hard.

Write: Here’s the most challenging set of writing exercises! Work your way up the categories from using a noun in a sentence to composing full emails or letters. The Taking Notes category presents audio for you to listen to (like voicemails, lectures, and recipes) and jot down the key points. Try using paper and pen for this one if typing is a challenge.

Understand

Set the Field Size to 6, the Difficulty to Hard, and use the Listen mode. Select multiple categories – try them all to start. Then you can see where your problems are to focus on those categories the next time.

Speak

Do you freeze up when you have to give your phone number or zip code? Do times or money amounts make you sweat? Practice saying thousands of numbers in the categories that give you trouble (e.g. select Four Digits: Other for numbers like 8,037) and add your own custom phone numbers to practice.

Type

This is the activity to push your attention, memory, and focus. Choose to Listen, then pick your categories. Seven- and Ten-digit Phone Numbers are the hardest. Type in what you hear on the keypad, then check your answer. For an additional challenge, wait 3-5 seconds after the number is read out before you enter your answer.