Child Language Teaching and Therapy

This study examines a group of children who had attended language unit provision between the ages of 3;6 and 7 years. At follow-up the children were between 7;10 and 13;3 years (mean 9.9 years). Of the 24 children, five went into mainstream school, 12 went into a language unit within a mainstream junior school and seven went to special school provision when they transferred at the end of year 2. Comparisons are drawn between the three groups in five areas, general ability, speech and language ability, literacy, phonological processing ability and behaviour. As a whole, the group continued to perform relatively poorly on most tasks with 19 (79%) continuing to have significantly delayed language development, 15 (62%) delayed reading accuracy and 13 (54%) delayed reading comprehension. Between 10 and 15 were presenting with behaviour difficulties depending on whether their performance is reported by parents or teachers. With some notable exceptions the pattern of results indicated that those children who went straight into mainstream school performed better on all measures than those who either went into further language unit provision or those who went to special schools. However, the differences between the mainstream and language groups did not reach statistical significance for any of the tasks except the two rhyme sub-tests from the Phonological Assessment Battery. The results suggest that there may only be marginal differences (at least on the measures employed in the present study) between those attending units and those deemed to be able to manage in mainstream school. A sub-group (n = 5) was identified which was made up of those children whose language scores had effectively normalized, remained relatively similar to those children whose delays persisted except for the rotation task of the British Ability Scale and for their reading accuracy and spelling. The results are discussed in terms of service provision to children with this type of difficulty.

This study investigated the possibility of identifying narrative problems at an early age (5-year-old children with language impairment). Furthermore, we explored the relationship between the comprehension of a story and the ability to structure the contents of the same story in a group of preschool children with language impairment. The results showed that the participants did not exhibit age-appropriate narrative skills. We also found that good comprehension of the narrative is a prerequisite for the ability to produce a story with a content structure in a retelling task. Methodological issues are discussed and the clinical implications highlighted.

A bilingual Punjabi-English-speaking child, whose speech was characterized by inconsistent errors in both languages, participated in an intervention programme. A core vocabulary therapy approach was used targeting consistency of production. The accuracy and intelligibility of the child’s speech improved in both languages, even though therapy had only been provided in English. The results of the study contrast with a previous study targeting consistent phonological errors in a bilingual child. While the results of single case studies should be interpreted with caution, the findings suggest that phonological therapy targeting the deficit underlying speech disorder is effective in remediating the errors in both of the child’s languages. However, therapy simply correcting specific surface speech patterns is only effective in the language targeted in therapy. These data have theoretical implications regarding the nature of phonological disorders, and the separateness of bilingual children’s phonological systems. There are also clinical implications regarding intervention for bilingual children with disordered speech.

This paper presents the results of communication skills assessments for two groups of 20 children who had four-limb cerebral palsy. Group 1 children were unintelligible out of context, group 2 children were intelligible to their parents. The pragmatic functions used by children in conversation with their mothers and during a semi-structured communication skills assessment were compared. Children in group 1 produced more functions of communication in the scripted assessment than in conversation with their mothers. No clear difference was observed for children whose speech was intelligible without contextual cues. The implications for practice are discussed.

The ability to define words with accuracy and precision can enhance the clarity of spoken and written communication in literate contexts. Thirty-six adolescents (mean age = 15;1) were asked to define 16 abstract nouns (e.g. burden, gratitude, friendship) in writing. Students who were strong readers (n = 18) outperformed those who were weak readers (n = 18) in providing definitions that were accurate, precise, and informative, reflecting the essential meaning of a term. Implications for instruction in word definition are offered for speech-language pathologists working collaboratively with classroom teachers.