IT'S ON THE
TIP
OF MY TONGUE
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IT'S ON THE
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FOREWORD
By
Geraldine P. Wallach, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Associate Professor, Department of Communicative Disorders
California State University, Long Beach
Have
you ever forgotten a personâs name at the moment of introduction? Ever
struggled in the middle of a conversation to recall the name of the town
where your friends just bought a new condo?
Every attempted to pronounce a complex word, only to substitute a word
that sounds similar, but falls short of the intended target?
Ever loose a seemingly familiar word suddenly?
All speakers of a language÷young and old, professional and nonprofessional,
male and female (including all other categories one might use to describe
the human condition)÷can identify with these phenomena.
Communication, among the most basic yet critical aspects of human endeavors,
is often taken for granted until it is lost or disrupted.
To say the least, losing words and struggling to find them, can be embarrassing
and frustrating. Word-finding
lapses cannot only interrupt oneâs train of thought and enthusiasm for
lively conversation, but these lapses can also contribute to feelings of
self-doubt and anxiety. Luckily,
help is on the way!
Dr.
Diane German, a consummate research, teacher, clinician, and nationally-recognized
scholar in the area of word finding and retrieval, presents her readers
with a book that is extremely well organized.
It is clever and timely, packaging for its readers research-based concepts
in very accessible and user-friendly ways.
The book presents readers with an excellent summary of the nature and types
of word-finding difficulties that may occur in everyday conversations,
in workplace situations and within classroom settings.
Through a series of cartoon-like ãconversation bubbles,ä
German gives readers examples of word-finding errors they may be experiencing.
The book not only provides readers with information about the different
types of word-finding problems, it also provides them with detailed self-evaluation
checklists to help readers identify their own word-finding errors.
Dr. German guides her readers through the book with creative icons that
serve as friendly road maps, or bookmarks, through discussion sections
and to the practical howâs, whenâs, and whyâs of
word naming, retrieval, and retrieval improvements.
The self-evaluation section is particularly interesting ö readers might
enjoy comparing their findings with family and friends who may also be
experiencing word-finding difficulties.
Indeed, this is farfrom a ãone size
fits all" book. German is
careful to point out both the ãdoâsä and ãdonâtsäofparticular
word-finding strategies and is cautious about the recommendations she makes
for readers. Her carefully-crafted
strategic approach to self-monitoring and self-awareness helps readers
focus on what might be significant areas for their improvement.
By demonstrating how different Îtipsä work for different people,we
get a better understanding of the complexities of word-finding difficulties.
We also understand how association strategies might work for one person,
whereas pausing strategies might work better for another person.
This
book is timely from many perspectives.
This book would be extremely useful for our senior citizens, who are vibrant
and living longer than ever, but who certainly have experienced some of
the ãlost wordsä German discusses.
This book would also be very valuable to those of us, myself included,
who are part of the ãbaby boomerä generation and who are losing more words
daily than we would like to admit.
The book would be a useful addition to the libraries of adolescents and
university students who might have difficulty with classroom and academic
learning. For all of us, embarking
on this age of ever-changing technology, learning and retaining the new
twenty-first century lexicon may certainly present some challenges.
No doubt, having specific strategies to improve our retrieval of words
would be welcomed.
Readers
will enjoy the adventure into the world of words that German has outlined.
Steeped in over twenty years of research,Dr.
German shares her wealth of knowledge with her readers.
While accessible and easy to follow, with pages and pages of practical
suggestions for improving word-finding skills, readers will go back for
several readings and will, no doubt,use
the book as a great reference source.
Itâs on the ãTip of My Tongueä is intelligent, fun, mind-stretching, and
thorough, creative, and exciting.There
are probably more words to describe what German provides for her readers÷it
is for the reader to find the appropriate words after his or her own exploration.
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