SentenceShaper 2, the NEW version!

This new version of SentenceShaper is designed to make the program more interesting to use, more personally relevant, and more effective as a treatment tool.

Therapy workbooks

SentenceShaper 2 comes with 15 built-in therapy workbooks (approximately 800 pages in all). Each therapy workbook contains a set of pages designed to help the user practice a particular grammatical structure, using colorful pictures by Chuck Dillon and providing spoken prompts, models of the target sentence, and word-finding help for each picture. The structures trained include simple sentences (subject, verb, direct object), prepositional phrases, adjectives, and subordinate clauses with because and while. We anticipate that new workbooks will be added in the future; clinicians may even wish to create and distribute their own workbooks.

Shown here is a page from one of these built-in therapy workbooks.

This page is from the workbook that trains simple transitive sentences with prepositional phrases. The target sentence is "The man is dropping the fish into the hat." The user looks at the picture and tries to create a sentence to describe it. The side buttons on the left play the important nouns in the sentence ("the man", "the fish", "the hat"); the side buttons on the right play the verb ("dropping") and preposition ("into"). The user clicks the forward arrow on the upper right to go to the next "page" (screen) of the workbook, where a new picture training prepositional phrases will be shown.

For more advanced users, there are workbooks to train more complex sentence structures, such as subordinate clauses with "while" and "because". For example, one workbook contains short picture sequences which the user is asked to describe using "because". A three-picture sequence from this workbook is shown below.

For this sequence, the user is asked questions about why the boy is happy, why he is pulling the woman, why the woman is spilling paint on the cat, and why the cat is being washed. As in the other workbooks, the system provides word-finding help, prompts consisting of "Why?" questions, and models of target responses for each picture. Another workbook uses these picture sequences to elicit short narratives.

Workbooks to elicit personal speech

In keeping with SentenceShaper's dual role as a communication aid AND therapy tool, the new version of the program is designed to support personal speech as well as therapy exercises. It includes two built-in personal speech workbooks, and (in the Deluxe version) tools to create personalized electronic scrapbooks.

The built-in personal speech workbooks: These two workbooks are designed to help the user start talking about personal topics, with two kinds of help: either sentence starter phrases or suggestions. For example, on the Movies and TV page (shown here) of the version with topic suggestions, the first side button plays the question "If someone were making a movie about your life, who would play the main roles?"

On the What If page of the version with sentence starter phrases, the side buttons play the beginnings of sentences, such as "If I won the lottery, I would..."

The Deluxe Edition of the program will also include tools to allow caregivers and clinicians to create electronic scrapbooks. These are new workbooks on topics of the user's choice; the pages can display the user's own photographs, or pictures found on the internet, or they may not need any picture. The user creates comments about each picture in his or her own voice. The page with the picture of the boy and dog is an example of an electronic scrapbook.

Coming soon: online manual and QuickStart Guide

This section of the website will soon include online, printable versions of the program's documentation, regularly updated in response to your feedback. There will also be more detailed information about troubleshooting and ways to use the program more effectively.

In the meantime, however, there is plenty of documentation built right into the program. Once you have installed the program (whether the trial copy or the full version), just click the "QuickStart Guide" button on the blue startup screen. This is actually a tiny manual, and reading it will NOT count against your allowed uses of the trial. Also, the suggestions on this site about clinical use of the older version of the program definitely apply to SentenceShaper 2...they just don't cover all the new features of the program, and the recording interface is a little different (and a lot easier) in the new version.

In addition to the QuickStart Guide, every screen in the program (except the initial test of your microphone and speakers) has its own help page that you can view right there in the program. In many parts of the program, you will see a button labeled "HELP", but in areas that may be used by people with aphasia we do not display this button (to keep things simple). Instead, just press the F1 key on your keyboard to see the help screen.