Targeting Negation in Speech Therapy (+ a FREE Activity)

Spend five minutes with a toddler, and you’ll quickly learn their favorite word: “NO.”

While it can be a frustrating response to a reasonable suggestion (like putting on a coat in the winter), this stage highlights negation, which is one of the earliest and most essential language concepts for children.

Negation plays a critical role in everyday communication outside of toddlerhood, too. We use it to express denial, opposition, absence, or rejection. Receptively, we must understand negation to follow written and verbal directions and comprehend exclusion, disagreement, and even sarcasm.

But for students with language delays, the concept of negation can be tricky. Like other grammatical skills, it may not come naturally or easily. And that's where language therapy comes in.

In this post, we'll define negation and explain how and why speech-language pathologists target it in speech therapy.

What is negation in language?

Negation is a grammatical process that expresses a preference or denial of an affirmative (or positive) word, clause, or sentence. We use negation for a variety of communicative functions, including refusing or rejecting, describing, commenting, expressing feelings, and asking and answering questions.

In English, there are many semantic and syntactic ways to communicate negation, including:

• Adding no (e.g., "I have no pets.") or not (e.g., "She is not ready.") to a sentence

• Using words with prefixes like dis- or un- and suffixes like -less

• Using negative adverbs, such as hardly, only, and never

• Using negative pronouns, such as nothing, no one, and nowhere

As mentioned, including not in a sentence is often used to indicate a negative statement. Auxiliary verbs (also known as helping verbs) may be followed by the word not (or the shortened version n't) to communicate negation. For example:

• "She is not (or isn't) ready."

• "They were not (or weren't) eating."

• "You have not (or haven't) met me."

• "I could not (or couldn't) finish the movie."

Why address negation in speech therapy?

The ability to use and understand negative words is crucial for many real-life situations, so it's important for speech therapy goals to incorporate these skills when students struggle with them.

Here are some social and academic skills that might be impacted (and therefore warrant intervention) when a student struggles with negation:

• Describing objects, states, or conditions, such as "The water isn't boiling." 

• Comparing and contrasting events, items, or vocabulary, such as "Vertebrates have a backbone while invertebrates don't have a backbone."

• Demonstrating comprehension of abstract or relational concepts, such as "The number 5 isn't an even number."

• Comprehending verbal directions, such as "Don't open the book yet."

• Expressing refusal or disagreement, such as "I don't like playing soccer."

• Asking questions, such as "Isn't that your backpack?"

• Making social observations or comments, such as "He's not being fair."

• Self-advocating by expressing facts, such as "I can't see what's written on the board."

As you can see, teaching and practicing negation in speech therapy leads to improved grammar skills and overall receptive, expressive, and pragmatic language gains.

Speech Therapy Activities for Teaching Negation

Whether you're working with young children or older students, in-person or virtually, there are many ways to teach and practice negative sentence structures.

Following Directions

Before you work on negation expressively, you may want to make sure the student understands negation concepts by following directions that contain a negative word. You could use objects or pictures to have students select an item that isn't in a given category, doesn't perform a certain action, or doesn't possess a certain feature.

For example, the directions may contain a negation concept. These digital task cards (get them here on Boom) can be used in teletherapy or on a tablet or interactive whiteboard. Students select and move the correct picture (article of clothing) that isn't or doesn't have a given characteristic.

Sorting Items

When looking at items, you can sort them by various characteristics. You can use your favorite toys or trinkets as concrete examples. Receptively, you can have the student identify the object that doesn't have a given characteristic related to color, texture, size, etc.

In this example, the horses have been separated from the other animals to elicit sentences such as "The animals are all horses," and "The animals are not horses." An object description visual is also provided to help students identify ways that the items might differ.

In teletherapy, you can sort digital pictures in the same way using Google Slides. Rather than sorting physical items, you can import Google Images (or any other pictures you have) right into a slide. You can also use text boxes to type the negation sentences.

🔽Get FREE printable and digital sorting mats to target negation!🔽

Using Negation Activity for Speech Therapy.pdf

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Movement Games

For younger children, there are various games that you can play to elicit negation in sentences.

• When playing hide-and-go-seek, you could model and practice sentences such as "You were not hiding under the desk."

• Simon Says is a silly game that might include negative sentences such as "I did not touch my nose."

• When playing musical chairs, students could say something like, "I couldn't find an open chair."

Spot the Difference Pictures

Looking at two similar picture scenes allows students to identify and express which items are present in one picture but not in another. It's a concrete way to model and elicit negation sentences.

This activity includes 8 scenes per season (also available on Boom), each with 5 differences, and can be used year-round to work on negation concepts. Students can write on the printed pages or use the self-checking Boom Cards to tap or click the differences.

Children's Books

In most stories, you can find instances of items being missing or different from others or characters refusing something or expressing preferences. 

An example of a children's book that includes negation is No, David! by David Shannon, when David is told various actions are not safe or acceptable. Another example is Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems, when the pigeon doesn't get to drive the bus.

Scavenger Hunts

A scavenger hunt is a great way to target many language goals, including negation. For example, students could seek to find something that is not blue or not used indoors. 

Poll Questions

Inviting students to answer poll questions is a great way to naturally elicit negative language forms. Sharing opinions on various matters gives students opportunities to express agreement, disagreement, and reasoning.

In this set of poll questions for speech therapy, the question, "Do you like pineapple on pizza?" encourages students to either affirm or deny liking pineapple on pizza. This can elicit a negative sentence such as "I do not like pineapple on pizza."

Guessing Games

Many games that require students to figure out a person or object naturally include negation in the sentence structure of questions, answers, and statements. For example, a student may say something like, "The object isn't found in a kitchen" or "The item isn't red" when playing this language tile guessing game.

In this "Guess the Person" game, students may answer questions by saying, "My person doesn't have blue eyes" or "My person isn't smiling."

Tips for Teaching Negation in Speech Therapy

• Use concrete, familiar vocabulary and concepts in activities.

• Contrast affirmative and negative forms side-by-side.

• Use visual supports (e.g., thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons, sorting mats, Xs and checkmarks, sentence strips) to illustrate positive and negative forms.

• Take advantage of natural, real-life opportunities (e.g., snack time: “No more crackers”) to model and elicit negation.

• Provide lots of repetition across various contexts to allow students opportunities to generalize negation concepts.

Negation might seem like a small part of language, but it has a big impact on a student’s ability to express themselves clearly and effectively in academic and social settings.

Whether you’re targeting “don’t,” “isn’t,” or more advanced negative structures (like double negatives), consistent exposure and functional practice will help your students develop a solid grasp of negation, and with it, more confidence in how they communicate in their daily lives.

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