Measuring and describing: Alternative or complementary approaches to assessment

Abstract

Abstract Despite the polemic style of ‘Everyday literacy in aphasia’, Parr makes a number of assertions about the delivery of aphasia therapy (in this case focused on literacy skills) which are uncontroversial. She draws our attention to the need to be cognisant of each client's former and current literacy needs and the variety of literacy acts in which non-aphasic and aphasic persons participate. She emphasizes the need to investigate each client's individual literacy activities; notes that aphasic persons may be able to make strategic use of banking cards, word processors and dictaphones to the extent that linguistic impairments may be masked by what she refers to as ‘social, technical and operational strategies'; and she sensibly suggests that part of therapy is exploring, with the clients, new ways of coping with restricted language skills. None of these observations is controversial: it is common clinical practice to take account of individual social and other non-linguistic factors when planning the...