A Framework for Teaching Conversational Interaction

This text-based course is a written transcript of the course, "A Framework for Teaching Conversational Interaction," presented by Dr. Barbara Hoskins and Kristine Noel, on October 25, 2010.

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This text is being provided by Communication Access Realtime Translation in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

>> Amy Hansen: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today's Expert Seminar Series titled, " A Framework for Teaching Conversational Interaction", presented by Dr. Barbara Hoskins and Kristine Noel.

I would like to introduce Dr. Barbara Hoskins and Kristine Noel this afternoon. Barbara Hoskins is a speech language pathologist with a doctorate in learning disabilities from Northwestern University. She has worked as an educational consultant and speech-language pathologist in public and private schools, clinics, psychiatric hospitals and juvenile justice facilities. Dr. Hoskins is a nationally recognized speaker who conducts workshops for SLPs, teachers and other professionals across the US and Canada. She originally developed the program, "Conversations", which has been used successfully for over a decade. She is currently developing a new version of the program called "Framework for Teaching Conversations", a program for adolescents and young adults which has been revised and is in collaboration with Kristine Noel. Kristine Noel is also a speech language pathologist and educational consultant who has worked as a Coordinator of Special Education and as a clinician in public schools, hospitals, HeadStart programs and juvenile justice settings as well. Kristine was part of the team that developed the original conversations program and has been using it since its original development. Currently she's the Professional Development Coordinator for Region IX Education Cooperative in New Mexico. She works collaboratively with the teachers, learning communities, administrators and related service staff to increase student's academic achievement and behavioral competence. Kristine is currently completing her Ph.D. in special education at the University of New Mexico and is a lecturer in the Department of Special Ed. Welcome to both of you this afternoon and thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today.

[Applause]

>> Dr. Hoskins: Thank you. I am aware this is reaching SLPs across the United States and Canada as well as in other countries. Let's start by talking about "why conversations?".

Introduction - Why Conversations?

The purpose of our presentation is to introduce a framework for language interventions that actually brings together all the key aspects of language needed for effective conversational interaction.

This approach grew out of the recognition that first of all language is learned from infancy in conversation. It is not learned and then someone has a conversation. It is actually learned from infancy in conversation. We'll explain what we mean by that.

Also, the end goal of all language intervention is to be effective conversational partners. So no matter what we are working on we are ultimately trying to get our students to be effective conversational partners.

Kristi and I have worked with school age children and adolescence with diverse needs, those with not only speech and language disorders but also with significant behavior disorders, those from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, those with autism spectrum disorders, etc. We realize we need an intervention program that allows us to work with groups of diverse learners and that would also teach them the range of linguistic conceptual skills and social-cognitive skills, or pragmatic skills, that they needed to communicate effectively. We realize that we could not just continue to teach individual specific skills and then later try to teach them to generalize those into conversation but that we had to actually teach them how to use skills; to weave those skills into conversational interaction as we went.

Conversation: What it Takes

Let me introduce the framework by asking you to do some brainstorming with us. I would like you to list So five to eight aspects of language or communication that you think are important for effective conversational interaction.