As I recover from a moderate traumatic brain injury, working through understanding new limitations, and looking for ways to cultivate positive outcomes from a negative event, I plan to post resources for recovery and accommodation as I discover them.
One of my new limitations is a tendency to think ahead of my speech, making comments that are out-of-context for those who cannot read my thoughts as I think them. Sometimes entire sentences and words that I believe I have spoken, were not spoken. More often, I speak parts of words, dropping prefixes or suffixes as I speak, or even single letters of the alphabet as I write. I have discovered I make word substitutions such as "necrology" instead of "neurology." Since my accident, dropped words are now common in my speech and writing.
Social resources
One of the most humbling aspects of a long-term recovery is the need to accept the help of others, and to show appreciation for "help" when it goes beyond what was wanted or needed. As I work on this website, expect to see changes as people make comments to help me improve the site and make it more useful.
I depend on others to help me overcome these difficulties with my speech. If others do not make me aware I have said something that makes no sense, then I assume they have understood me. Depending on others to help me recognize errors requires me to contribute to the process by accepting others' misguided attempts to help with a sincerely appreciative attitude.
Software resources
Just as I depend on others to tell me when my spoken words have not made sense, I depend on software to help me express myself clearly and consisely in writing.
MS Word's document review feature can identify misspelled words and grammatical errors. However, MS Word can be tedious for checking single paragraphs that are common in online posts. SpellCheckPlus.com is free to use, and does a great job of identifying grammatical errors. In a recent email to the company, I wrote:
... I tried using the grammar checker in Word, but word seemed more concerned about use of passive voice than it was in nonsensical word choices. Your software catches my errors, and it enables me to write intelligibly....
Resources:
Nadasdi, T. & Sinclair, S. (2012). Spell check plus. Nadaclair Language Technologies.
Retrieved from http://Spellcheckplus.com.
Neurology. (2012). Dictionary.com unabridged. Retrieved from
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/neurology
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I believe this is a great start for you. Life's a trip, this particular road just seems to have a lot of chuckholes and needs to be mapped a bit.
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