Colorful Semantics

Being the geek that I am, in April I elected to spend over $100 of my birthday money to try out some apps on my new fancy-shmancy BIG WHOPPER iPad.  Like any good addict, once I got started, I had trouble stopping, so when I saw yesterday a post from London Speech Therapy looking for a SLP to review their app, I offered  up my services.  I've heard of Colorful Semantics but hadn't had a chance to check it out until this weekend. Here's the iTunes link:   https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colourful-semantics/id616701130?mt=8


Colorful Semantics is a FREE printable program distributed by the London Speech and Language Pathologists.  Basically, Colorful Semantics is a simple color coding method of teaching people to relate a grammatical category to a wh-question and tie it all together with a color.  For example, "Who?" means People/Subjects and is Orange.  Every time you encounter the question "Who?" it has an orange background.  All the people/animal subjects are also presented with an orange background.  This is a concept that's been around for a long time, aka the Fitzgerald Key, but this program organizes the instruction nicely for us.  You can download the printable version here: http://www.londonspeechtherapy.co.uk/colourful-semantics/


The basic operation of this app is to present the user with a photograph, a field of symbol choices and a question:  Who? What Doing? Where? and What?.  Users are asked to select a symbol that answers the question.  A correct response gives the user a check mark and a verbal label for the picture.  A lady with a lovely accent  encourages users to imitate the label  "your turn to say it!"  After a moment, the lovely lady comes back and labels the picture with a full developed sentence and then invites us again, "your turn to say it!". When all the questions are answered in a category the app gives us a "Well Done!" like all polite British apps!

The first item I checked for is a SETTINGS button.  Like all good apps, this one has a SETTINGS button which allows us to take this good idea and customize it to meet our needs.  You can add your own photographs and questions for a highly individualized experience.  Here are the detailed directions for the app and adding your own content:  http://www.londonspeechtherapy.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/downloads-manager/upload/Instructions.pdf.

A little bug to know about:  Sometimes on startup the app gets "stuck" saying it is "updating scenes."  The developer was quick to respond to my request for assistance and simply reinstalling the app corrected the problem.

Ideas for the future:  I'd love to see another update to this app offering an "advanced" level which offers students a field of answers from each grammatic category to help them begin to discriminate between the type of wh-question being asked.  Maybe in the next-next update??

Thanks so much to the developer for sharing with us!