I think most of the students I have worked with for clinical practicum are on board with the value of positive reinforcement (and appreciate receiving it themselves), but I have some particular opinions on what I consider to be truly helpful in promoting skill learning and productive behavior. For one, I’m not a huge fan of generic and/or constant praise — to me, it seems insincere and weird to say things like, “Nice looking” or “Good talking.” There are certainly situations where a clinician needs to focus on whatever positives are available to help promote a better rapport/atmosphere at that time, but I start to get worried if I hear a regular stream of this kind of praise without actually examining if it is in fact (a) true, (b) actually a distraction from learning or adjusting the teaching/situation to get more authentic intervention, or even (c) helpful. Sometimes it feels a lot to me like chatter…just more noise the learner has to navigate through to figure out why they are there. If this is really the best/only praise a clinician can offer, it is time to seriously look at whether or not the goals are appropriate, the teaching has been presented to be well matched to the student need, and the environment has been structured to promote focus and success, etc.

The following is a set of information I organized to emphasize my own belief in the value of instructive feedback — anchoring the praise with the skill and/or why the skill is relevant. With instructive feedback, positive reinforcement can include re-stating the rationale (“You are working hard to learn to read!”), and/or the strategy (“Wow! You looked at each letter and thought of the sound it makes.”). That’s not to say these features would need to be present every trial, but they do keep the presence of why they are working with you, and what they do which promotes their success. This distinguishes what we as SLPs do as unique from praise they may receive elsewhere (it orients the individual to his/her communication or literacy), raises metacognitive awareness to promote self-monitoring, and provides the structure for corrective feedback in a non-threatening way. That is, if the client gets something wrong, the feedback is provided in the same way: “Remember, look at each letter and think about the sound it makes.” is, in my opinion, infinitely more helpful and less threatening than, “No. Try again.”

I would also say that it’s helpful, whenever possible, to keep it sincere and fun.

This is an example of a simple way to have a small gesture of phonological awareness is to match a praise comment with the initial phoneme associated in the task. For example, if a student found the letter /i/ in a letter-sound-correspondence (LSC) activity on the keyboard, to say, “Incredible!” The following try to keep with that principle, but I wouldn’t consider it exhaustive or perfect. In any case, strategies like these should be what you are personally comfortable with.

Absolutely, Amazing,
Beautiful
Cool
Dynamite
Excellent
Fantastic
Great, good (for you), gorgeous
Hooray, holy cow
Incredible!
Joy! Jinkies! just like that,

Kiss your brain!, keep it up!

Lovely, Lookin’ good!

Magnificent, Marvelous
Neat, Nice one/job
Outstanding, Oh my gosh
Perfect, pat yourself on the back, powerful
Quite right
Right on!, Rockin’
Super, sweet, *
Terrific
Up, up and away — you are taking off!
Very nice, va-va-voom!
Wow, woah!, woo-hoo!, Working hard!
X-ray your brain: I need to look at all that learning!
Yahoo!, yipee, yay!, yes!, you got it!
Zoom! Zowie!

You can find more (with accompanying ‘cheers’ at http://www.drjean.org/html/monthly_act/act_2004/06_june/06_2004a.html — click on the links at the top or bottom of the page that say “Cards 4-6” etc.

*One cautionary note: Please avoid using the word “smart” with kids and parents. This word is remarkably entangled with emotions – not unlike “stupid” or “dumb.” Research has shown that kids who are praised for being smart are less likely to take learning risks than kids who are praised for their effort (Dweck, 2007). So if a situation is presented where they are not confident they can keep the “smart” label, they will withdraw and not try at all because they do not want to appear “not-smart.” Kids who were praised for perseverance and effort (regardless of accuracy), were more willing to try and/or ask questions even when they weren’t sure they knew the answer.