The Teaching of Talking: Learn to Do Expert Speech Therapy at Home With Children and Adults Paperback – Illustrated, August 1, 2012

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 butnot 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.

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 did not use all the suggestions in the book it became a little too complex for me. Thats the only reason a 4*..However someone else could find this book easy to understandIt just wasn't me

Upon returning to the field of Speech Pathology after happily staying home to raise my children, I can honestly say that the "Teaching of Talking" is a groundbreaking book for therapists and families who have been impacted by TBI or stroke. It is a logical and simplistic system that will help therapists train caregivers, so that once therapy time is over these individuals will continue to make progress. With the possibility of major changes to healthcare we cannot look to the therapists, as people who will magically be able to make loved ones talk. It is unrealistic and Mark's book is the first realistic approach to making major gains in the speed of recovery from brain injury. Well written, organized and concise. He is an inspiration!

I have read about two thirds of the book so far and browsed the rest. I plan to finish reading it and to use some of the ideas. The technique is reasonable, but the descriptions and scripts are repetitive, and what do you do if the patient doesn't respond as his script reads?People all around the world teach their children to talk and to read by talking to them and reading to them concerning topics of immediate interest.We have found it effective to read articles in unison, then read shorter items alternating sentences. The patient's reading ability and clarity of speech have improved dramatically in the past few months of doing so. Find an email newsletter on a topic that interests the patient and try it!If your patient is completely non-verbal, this book would be a good starting point. If your patient is already speaking and reading a little, try the above method. Best wishes for a successful recovery.

I wish I had read this book over 2 yrs ago when our daughter came home after a stroke and a 2 month coma.....she's had almost three years of traditional speech therapy, but as this book explains the magic happens at home with loved ones seven days a week. The book has so many tips from the very beginning of the process to progressively improving one's speech and understanding by drawing the subject out and helping them want and feel able to communicate with the outside world.....it ALL happens in everyday life with parents and loved ones....not an hour a week in "speech therapy" doing excercises from third grade workbooks (sorry therapists, you do help too but you can't achieve much in an hour or two a week.....we still love you!).

I bought the book to help with my wife who has aphasia and showed it to her sister who does therapy with her and she wanted it. Then I bought a second copy and showed it to my wife's outpatient therapist and she wanted it. Now I'm buying a third book but it looks like the aphasia group therapist wants it also. Maybe eventually I'll get a chance to read the book.