Teaching Syntax With An Engaging App: Syntax City

Over a decade ago, Smarty Ears apps released their Syntax City App, an innovative tool for teaching syntax. They were kind enough to gift me this $19.99 app so I could provide a first person, hands on review for caregivers and colleagues. Nearly 12 years later and Syntax City still ranks in my top 10 list of apps for speech therapy. Let’s take an even closer look at this engaging and reinforcing app: Syntax City.

Getting Started

Before you dive into the app, I highly recommend that you take a tour through a tutorial that lasts just under 10 minutes via the ‘Support’ tab. Next, you will need to set up some profiles. Type in the user name and chose either an avatar or photo image for a visitor badge. Up to five users can ‘visit the city’ at one time. You could also opt for a ‘quick play’ with one player, which will give you a chance to play and collect data, but the information will not save in ‘quick play’ mode.  At any time, you can remove badges too by deleting users.

While in settings mode, you can also chose the following:

• Play Audio on/off
• Remove error choices or allow users to hear a buzzer when incorrect
• Recorder on/off

Before playing, you need to select the players that will visit, and then the next screen will show you selected users on the bottom. Simply drag and click users to any area you desire. Even better, you can bring one user to multiple locations. This is my favorite feature because you can target each individuals goal all during one game!! First, you move your player ID to a location, then you select a level. Some locations have more options for levels than others.

Syntax city is primarily a receptive language app with 2-3 word choices to fill in the blanks for sentences. However, you can also work on expressive language skills by having users record correct sentences, thereby giving users a chance to hear auditory feedback of syntactically correct sentences. By recording, you can also address any articulation concerns by having clients self-rate their utterances.

Teaching Syntax Through Play

Initially, the first thing that caught my eye about this app, was the clever, categorical layout of the city. You have the option of visiting any or all of the following locations:

• Plurals Zoo
• Was-Were Bakery
• Do-Does Gym
• Irregular Past Tense Farm
• Is-Are Park
• Have-Has Grocery
• 3rd Person Singular Beach
• He-She Ski Resort

After dragging players to locations, you are prompted to select a level of play.

When you first enter a location, you will see a scene related to that destination and hear a cute passage that talks about the importance of using that particular syntax appropriately.

Play commences with users shown his or her visitor badge in the upper left hand corner of the screen. A picture scene that matches the location appears with a sentence and 2-4 word choices (depending on the level of play selected.) Sentences are read aloud and users must tap the correct word choice to fill in the blank. Unfortunately, the audio stops as soon as the user makes a selection. I would like to see the audio play the entire sentence even if answer choices are selected quickly.

Teaching Syntax Through Game Rewards

The absolute highlight for all my trial users was earning prizes for correct answer choices. Each location has a shelf load of items that relate to the destination. For example, accurate answers on the beach earn you prizes like a beach towel, chair, and container of sea salt. I REALLY like the categorization design for prizes too! We have been reviewing the prize shelf, and then removing pictures and talking about the items we can recall from that category.

Also included in this app is a data collection screen. This page tracks each users performance in each location when you play in the ‘visit the city’ mode. You can opt to email, print or copy this page for fast and efficient data collection!