This class of stroke survivors can intelligently formulate the words into meaningful sentences but fail to speak them. It is not uncommon to see these individuals missing words or misusing words in their sentences.
Aside from this, stroke can also affect an individual’s ability to sustain mutual conversations where participants speak in turns.
They may also lack the tone needed to transmit the emotional component of their speeches. A person who had a stroke could also have issues detecting the humor in a conversation.
READ: Can You Do Stroke Rehab At Home?
What is the way forward, then?
To repair your communication, it is recommended to leverage speech therapy. This can be done independently or via a professional speech therapist.
A speech therapist will help you with critical components of your post-stroke rehabilitation, like improving your swallowing, speech formation, and overall visual communication clues.
With such professional guidance, you get tested-and-proven templates for repeating words, rehearsing speech (with strategic emphasis on consonants and vowels), reading, sustainably engaging in conversations with multiple parties, and overall understanding longer sentences.
That said, your speech coherence after stroke has a lot to do with your capacity to remain calm and composed when speaking.
At times, it appears the words are stubbornly stuck to the tip of your tongue but don’t give in to the pressure to speak hurriedly.
Otherwise, your speech may end up brazenly distorted. To lessen the communicational strain, use simple and short sentences to express yourself.
Maintaining direct eye contact with the other party can help you stay engaged while speaking. This also enhances your focus on the chat.
If you have aphasia, ensure that background noise is eliminated or reduced to the barest minimum to improve the clarity of the sound signals from the convo.
Of course, you can deploy visual clues when speaking. Making hand gestures to better transmit your message is allowed.