Successful communication. What does it need?

Have you ever wondered what a person needs for successful communication.

Well there is 
- everyone working together
- appropriate vocabulary for contexts
- motivating things to communicate about, to name just 3.

Critically interaction and communication builds upon success and each other.

Check out this great visual display, of what is required to have really successful communication and interaction. In 2012, Kate Ahern developed this great resource of the Periodic Table of AAC

Talk to Cathy about your own communication development and interaction using AAC.

Cathy 

Cathy Basterfield
0466 579 8955
cathy@accesseasyenglish.com.au
www.accesseasyenglish.com.au

The internet and your reading

The internet continues to promise to be the answer to all our reading and information needs.

An article in this weekends Melbourne Age  summarises some recent research from New Zealand's (Wellington) Victoria University.

The study by Hooper and Herath reinforce previous studies which identifies people read differently, comprehend less, recall less and concentrate differently when reading online. 
Interestingly, it identifies people still commonly print off items they think are important.

It reported people actually expect to be interrupted when reading online.

Read their full article here  

 Think about the people who have low literacy now. Read my other blogs from October 2013 for a discussion on the demographics and incidence of low literacy, both for Australia and internationally. How do these people access the internet, and stay informed?

Talk to Cathy about how to improve the readability and content of your web information and websites.

Cathy

Cathy Basterfield
cathy@accesseasyenglish.com.au
0466 579 855
www.accesseasyenglish.com.au

Reference


Hooper, Val and Herath, Channa, "Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Impact of the Internet on Reading Behaviour" (2014). BLED 2014 Proceedings. Paper 1.
http://aisel.aisnet.org/bled2014/1
 

Challenging yourself

Did you catch the ABC's Australian story this week?

Listen to Australian singer, Megan Washington  talk about her communication challenges. story on iview

Cathy

Cathy Basterfield
cathy@accesseasyenglish.com.au
www.accesseasyenglish.com.au
0466 579 855

Free download of resources

Books without Words regularly have at least one of their resources at 1/2 price to purchase.  This month it is “Going to the doctor” and “Going to Out-patients.”
http://booksbeyondwords.co.uk/news/books-month
This is a great way to build up your resource library from this organisation.  Remember though this is UK based resources, so some images or messages may not be accurate for an Australian audience.  However, you could add an Australian image, where needed, to your conversation with the person using the books.

 There are also many of their resources available at 5 pounds each for ipad or kindle. http://booksbeyondwords.co.uk/bookshop

In addition a number of their resources are available for free download. http://booksbeyondwords.co.uk/resources
Print these off in color and have them bound properly - they are great resources for many people.  Remember many people with low literacy prefer a hard copy to looking at screens.

Currently in the free download section, there are some titles which have no language, or a few words. Some have longer statements.  Use as a basis for making it work for your audience.
Check out the titles
- “How to look after my balls.”
- “Having a colonoscopy.”

Talk to Cathy about modifying your health literature for people with low literacy.

Cathy

Cathy Basterfield
www.accesseasyenglish.com.au
cathy@accesseasyenglish.com.au

0466 579 855