Resources

Visual templates

A number of important visual templates complement the NADIIA principles. These reinforce the metalinguistic and metacognitive concepts. These are freely available at the following links.

1. Sentence Cue
A visual representation of the verb argument structure depicting

‘Who does what to whom with what?’.

2. Discourse frameworks

Visual templates for the ‘discourse maps’ are used to facilitate accessing, planning and integrating the three levels of words, sentences and macrostructure. Each individual genre has (1) an organisational map, or ‘mind map’ and (2) an A3 multilevel template

(a) Mind maps

Narratives

Recounts

Procedures

Opinions

(b) Multilevel templates (printing to A3)

Narratives

Recounts

Procedures

Opinions

3. Self-monitoring

To reinforce awareness of word, sentence and macrostructure level elements and monitor performance, a Self Rating Scale is used after each topic is produced. The same scale is used across all genres and across all topics.

A copy of all NADIIA templates are located here.

Pictorial prompts

The program is conversational, interactive, and can be carried out without any pictorial prompts. When new genres are introduced, however, pictorial prompts have been used. These can be particularly useful when introducing narratives, or stories, where picture sequences can focus on each event in sequence, access relevant vocabulary and create a sentence/s that can then be integrated into the beginning, middle or end of the story. Prompts can be drawn from usual clinic resources. Those drawn on in research studies have included:

Narrative: Toomey, M., & Newman, K. M. (1992). Sequence plus: Sequence pictures with vocabulary. Leicester: Circuit Publications.

Similarly, prompts to stimulate providing opinions can be found in most clinical settings, and even in the daily newspaper. Those drawn on in research studies have included:

Opinions: ColourCards - Social Behaviour. Skills for Daily Living (2002). Speechmark Publishing Ltd.

While picture prompts can be used initially, it is important, where possible, to move quickly to eliciting salient, individualised topics from the client.