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This paper examines interactions between three congenitally deaf children with cochlear implants and their speech and language therapist. Speech therapy interaction was examined in doll house play sessions, where the therapist applies the auditory-verbal method. Play sessions were video recorded, and examined using ethnomethodological conversation analysis. The focus of the analysis was the practises that the therapist used to enhance the children's listening and imitation skills. Two types of sequence; mutual orientation and attention seeking were analysed. A detailed examination of data extracts shows that besides speech, the speech therapist’s turns consist of multimodal elements, vivid prosody and non-verbal actions. The adjacency pairs in focus consist mostly of the therapist’s multimodal turns and the children’s non-verbal or vocal turns. In conclusion, the techniques of the auditory-verbal method and the speech therapist’s multimodal communication style work well in enhancing the listening skills and vocal communication of children with cochlear implants.

This article examines the professional practices of a speech and language therapist in triadic interaction with children with cochlear implants and their parents. The study aims to provide a more detailed picture of three-party therapy interaction and to describe shifts in participation during the therapy process. Speech and language therapy sessions were video recorded and examined using conversation analysis. The focus of the analysis was on co-operation between the therapist, the parent and the child in triadic task sequences. The analyses showed how the participation and roles of the therapist and the parent changed during the therapy process. The participatory roles changed from therapist-driven task interaction to shared practices between the therapist and parent, and finally lead to parent-driven task interaction. The study reveals the real-life practices of speech and language therapy and introduces the ways in which parents are involved in therapy.

This study examines lexical intervention sessions in speech and language therapy for children with cochlear implants (CIs). Particular focus is on the therapist's professional practices in doing the therapy. The participants in this study are three congenitally deaf children with CIs together with their speech and language therapist. The video recorded therapy sessions of these children are studied using conversation analysis. The analysis reveals the ways in which the speech and language therapist formulates her speaking turns to support the children's lexical learning in task interaction. The therapist's multimodal practices, for example linguistic and acoustic highlighting, focus both on the lexical meaning and the phonological form of the words. Using these means, the therapist expands the child's lexical networks, specifies and corrects the meaning of the target words, and models the correct phonological form of the words. The findings of this study are useful in providing information for clinicians and speech and language therapy students working with children who have CIs as well as for the children's parents.