Speech therapy helps children and the elderly with language. Various articles discuss how you can help someone with the language step by step. In this episode: personal pronoun.
Personal pronoun
A personal pronoun has to do with the personal form. This could be yourself, someone else, or several people. It is important for language development to know when to use which personal pronoun. A small child begins to become aware of other people because he is the first to say I. It understands that the child itself is ME and that someone else is not called ME.
Supplies and getting started
To practice this, you need several pictures and an object, for example a ball. Pictures can be from picture books or individual drawings. Make sure there is a clear difference between boys and girls in the pictures. And also whether it concerns 1 person or several people. Preference is given to separate plates because you can change them more easily.
Show the picture and ask a question about it. For example: ,what does she take with her,? Answer: ,she brings a ball., So let the child answer, making sure the word SHE is said. To show a clear difference, you can also place two pictures next to each other, a boy and a girl, and point to them alternately: HE, SHE, HE, SHE etc. Later you can practice, ,the ball is his , and ,the ball is hers,.
Make a good distinction between HE and SHE. Children often turn this around and don’t know what goes where . The hardest part is often explaining the ME and YOU. Point to yourself and say ME, point to the child and say YOU. What you usually see is that the child does the same, he points to himself and calls himself YOU, and he calls you ME. Take the child’s hand, point it to himself and say ME. Take the hand again and now point to yourself and say YOU. Point to another person with their hand and say YOU. It sometimes takes a while before the penny drops, but keep practicing this regularly. Practice the word YOU by giving the ball to the child and saying: the ball is for YOU.
Practicing YOU (plural second person) and THEY (plural third person) is a bit more difficult. For this you need pictures of several people. Start with the word YOU and leave out the word THEY as a plural, this will come much later. First point to yourself and say: I’m having a ball. Point to the picture of the multiple people and say: YOU are having a ball. Please note, only do this if the child can already form I, YOU, HE and SHE.
ME and US
Hold the ball tightly and say ,the ball is MINE,. Give the ball to the child and see if he wants to repeat this. If this goes well, hold the ball together and say: ,the ball is OURS,. Make sure that you do not put too much pressure on all exercises and that you practice everything at its own pace. Don’t expect everything to be clear within a few days. Even adults often have difficulty with personal pronouns. Then leave out the very difficult things, such as YOU and YOU PEOPLE. There will be a lot of mixing up in the beginning.
Go to the special ,language development and speech therapy, and follow the entire program step by step.