October 9th, 2005
Genre 3: Journal Entry from Matthew, a 9 year old with DAS
September 20, 2005
I found out today what
it is that's making it hard for me to talk. I had to go to a lady
who looked in my mouth and then made me say a bunch of different sounds
and words. It was pretty hard and I messed a lot of them up but
she said I did good. After I finished saying all the sounds and
words she came back to me and mom and told us what I had the most
problems with and that she thinks I have something called Verbal Apraxia.
Basically, my mouth has trouble trying to figure out what my brain
wants it to do when I talk. She said that she could help me if I
started going to therapy so I'm starting in 2 weeks. When we got
home, we talked about it with Dad and him and mom said it would be a
good idea and asked what I wanted to do. I told them if it would
help me talk right then I wanted to do it. Mom called the place
up and said we wanted to start working on how I talk and they set up a
time for me to come in. I start on October 10th. The lady told me
that I would get better all of a sudden but I hope it doesn't take too
long.
October 10, 2005
Well,
I finished my first day of therapy. It wasn't that bad.
Basically, the woman had me to say the same things over and over. Then
she had me try to say things that were close to the real word. I
did better at that then trying to say the real word. I felt kind
of dumb doing it because I knew I was messing everything up, even the
really easy sounds. I started to get mad over some of them
because they weren't hard sounds but I still couldn't even come close
to saying them right. She also made me sing some of the words
instead of just trying to say them. This was even worse than just
trying to say them because I hate to sing, I don't even sing in church
on Sunday. At least she sang with me so I didn't have to be
the only one sound stupid. The therapist (Mom told how to spell
that) let me take a break whenever I did REALLY bad and she told me
that, believe it or not, I was doing really, really good. I don't
know how much doing all that stuff helped but it wasn't too bad and if
it works, it will be worth it.
blackwell3
2. Audience: the child
3. Say Back: this journal entry describes the child's feelings and experiences of going to therapy.
4. Bless: You did a good job of describing the cause of his apraxia when you wrote "Basically, my mouth has trouble trying to figure out what my brain wants it to do when I talk" You also did a good job of writing in a child's voice.
5. Address: I know children don't usually write much, but your entries are kindof short. Maybe you meant to do it that way...if so, disregard my comment :) Maybe if you make the font bigger it will look like more!
Stalnaker
2. Audience: A child affected by verbal apraxia (personal journal)
3. Say Back: The author is giving readers a look into what the child feels about the evaluation and therapy processes for verbal apraxia.
4. Bless: I really like how by using the "words of a child," it made the journal entries easy to understand. The evaluation and therapy processes through a child's eyes was descriptive and not overly technical which made it interesting (and enjoyable) to read.
5. Address: At the top of the page where you had "Genre 3: Journal Entry," you could maybe change it to something like "Taken from the personal journal of Bobby, a 5 year old male with verbal apraxia." A comment like this at the beginning might help readers by letting them know what age this client is.