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The purpose of this paper is to explore the gradual development of verb-particle constructions in child language by examining longitudinal data from the spontaneous oral speech of Naima, an English-speaking girl from the Providence Corpus of the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 2000; Demuth, Culbertson & Alter, 2006), between ages 0;11 and 3;10. My findings also support the claim that input and interaction play a major role in the language acquisition process. Indeed, by analyzing the emergence and usage of phrasal verbs by Naima, I will thus compare the top ten verb-particle construction types used by the child and the adult. Ultimately, I will show the correlation between the most frequently used phrasal verbs in adult speech and the earliest constructions acquired by Naima

Looking for games and activities to do with your students to help them learn to use their communication systems more effectively and engage in social interactions? CALL Scotland to the rescue! Their website provides a wealth of free downloadable games and activities designed to provide fun communication opportunities.

"Below, you'll be able to download a short but constructive and fun communication activity for a youngster who uses AAC. The activities aim to help a student to learn and practise - in other words, use! - his or her communication aid to enjoy interactions with others and build up useful social and communicative experiences. To benefit, you first need to ensure that the Talker is always out of its bag, charged up, and on the table/wheelchair mount ready for daily use. That done, even a 5 minute 'gap' can be turned into a useful communication game. The activities are taken from CALL's 'Keep Talking' book, which was inspired by the teacher who, on one of CALL Scotland's visits, said with some desperation 'I know I'm not doing enough. Somehow, my brain goes all fuzzy - I just can't think of any communication games...'."

Creative ways of learning with Legos.

Find Lego activity guides here, including a pdf of ideas: www.littlebrickschoolhouse.com/mathactivities.pdf

Last month, we featured some wonderful videos from a project of the Angelman Syndrome Foundation that is a great starting point for anyone preparing to implement robust AAC for the first time (you can see that here). Today, we return to the ASF Communication Training Series to get an overview of key constructs in core vocabulary.