Social Language
Social language skills or pragmatic language, refers to the way we use language to communicate socially. Social language can include both verbal and nonverbal ways to communicate. For example, we use our verbal skills to introduce ourselves or to have a conversation with someone socially. We use nonverbal skills to interpret people's emotions and their body language to know how they might be feeling and how we might react to them. Please speak to your speech-language pathologist about what type of social skills your student might be learning.
Social Skills stories: Please refer to the link below for a variety of interactive social stories and lessons that are read to your child. Various topics include: lying, sharing, how to deal with anger, listening, team work, the loss of a loved one or pet, courage, manners and so much more.
Additional Resources for pragmatic language skills.
Nonverbal language: Nonverbal language is a very important part of social language. Nonverbal language can include: gestures, facial expressions, and body language. People communicate with nonverbal language everyday. Sometimes our students who have difficulty with pragmatic language have a difficult time interpreting nonverbal types of language or even difficulty knowing how to express themselves using nonverbal language. Let's imagine a student who does not understand the nonverbal gesture for quiet or be quiet which is shown by a person putting their index finger by their lips and sticking their lips out. Imagine this student walks into a quiet place i.e. a library and starts talking really loudly. The librarian gives the student the nonverbal cue of be quiet using the gesture and the student continues talking because they do not understand the nonverbal gesture for be quiet. The student may get into trouble for talking all because they did not know what the librarian was trying to communicate to him.
Practicing Nonverbal Language:
Charades: Nonverbal language can be practiced at home using a a game of charades. You can pre-select a few facial expressions or gestures and write them down on a piece of paper, draw them out of a hat and set a timer for 30 seconds to 1 minute to have the rest of the family members guess what the gesture is. Your student can take turns acting out the gesture or guessing what the gesture is.
Books: For younger students, you can use books that have characters in them that have different types of emotions or facial expressions to talk about the characters and what they might be feeling. Talk about what the character is doing with their face (i.e. His eyebrows are down and he is not smiling. Look at the tears in his eyes. He is crying. How do you think he feels? He feels sad. How do you know he is sad? I see his eyebrows down, he has tears in his eyes, and he is not smiling). Also, you may want to talk about what made the character feel this way.
Copy Cat: You can practice different facial expressions with your student by playing a game called copy cat. Sit with your student facing you or sit in front of a mirror with your student and have your student copy making the same facial expression as you. This can be fun and silly. Practice making sad faces, mad faces, worried faces, scared faces, silly faces, annoyed faces.
Idioms: Idioms are another area of language that are used socially. An idiom is a word or phrase that is used as an expression that is not meant to be taken literally. However, some of our students who struggle with social language may often take words or phrases very literally and need help understanding what they mean. An example of an idiom is "It's raining cats and dogs." The phrase does not literally mean cats and dogs are falling from the sky. It is a form of expression used to mean that it is raining really hard. Idioms are learned through using the expression in the appropriate context.