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How to model AAC

Handing someone a communication device and waiting is the most common way AAC fails. The thing that works is modelling: using the board yourself, out loud, every day, with nothing expected back.

What modelling actually is

Its formal name is aided language stimulation, and it is simply this: the communication partner uses the AAC system while speaking, so the learner sees their language represented on the board they are expected to use. Nobody learns to talk without hearing thousands of hours of speech first. A child learning a board has usually seen it used a handful of times — almost always to make a demand of them.

Why it is the highest-value thing you can do

Everything else about an AAC system — the vocabulary, the symbols, the voice, the device — is inert until somebody demonstrates what it is for. Modelling is also the only part that costs nothing and needs no equipment, and it is the part most often skipped, because it feels strange to narrate your own life while poking at a tablet. It stops feeling strange in about a week.

How to do it

1. Keep the board where you are. You cannot model a device that is in a bag. It has to be open, charged and within reach during the ordinary parts of the day.
2. Say it and tap it together. Speak the whole sentence normally, and tap the one or two words on the board that carry the meaning — "do you want more?", "let's go". You are not transcribing yourself; you are pointing at the load-bearing words.
3. Model one word above where they are. If they use single words, model two. If they use two, model three. Far enough ahead to pull, close enough to reach.
4. Expect nothing back. No prompting, no hand-over-hand, no "your turn". A model with a demand attached stops being a model and becomes a test.
5. Model the whole range of language, not just requests. Comment, refuse, complain, joke, greet, tell someone to stop. If the only thing ever modelled is asking for snacks, that is the only thing the board will ever be used for.

The usual mistakes

• Turning it into testing. "What's this?", "show me more", "tell me what you want first". Communication stops being useful the moment it becomes an exam.
• Withholding to force use. Holding a snack hostage until the button is pressed teaches that the board is a toll gate. Give the snack; model the word.
• Only modelling nouns. Food and toys are easy to model and go nowhere. Core words — more, go, stop, not, want — are what build sentences.
• Putting it away when it isn't "AAC time". Nobody learns a language that is only available for half an hour on Tuesdays.

Fitting it into an ordinary day

You do not need sessions. You need the routines that already repeat, because repetition is what does the teaching:

• Meals and snacks — more, finished, don't like, want, help.
• Transitions — go, stop, wait, not now, come. Leaving the house produces the same handful of words every single time.
• Play and books — again, look, funny, my turn, different. This is where commenting gets modelled, which is the half of language requests never reach.

How long before it works

Longer than feels reasonable, and that is the part worth preparing for. It is normal to model for weeks or months before a learner initiates anything on their own, and it is normal for the first spontaneous use to be something you never modelled deliberately. The people who get results are the ones who kept modelling while nothing appeared to be happening. If it feels like you are talking to yourself, you are doing it correctly.