Child Language Teaching and Therapy

This article describes a method of initial reading used with an eight-year- old boy who had severe difficulties in expressive spoken language and in learning to read. He was introduced to written and typed words via the shapes of words colour-blocked in colours which code word-classes. He was given 50 hours' individual tuition in half-hour sessions, two or three times weekly. At the end of the year he could infallibly decode the 95 words with which he had worked, both when they were produced at random and when they were set in context.

Three single-subject case studies were used to determine if language skills regress following extended breaks from therapy. Language samples were elicited from three preschool language-impaired males following four alternating periods of therapy and no therapy. The samples, which were analysed for a variety of linguistic measures, indicated that regression usually did not occur following breaks from therapy. In fact, many measures evidenced substantial improvement.

Moor House School is a school for children of average nonverbal ability who have specific speech and language disorders. The educational careers of 120 children who left the school during the period 1979-1985 were investigated. The subjects were divided into four groups: Receptive Dysphasic (N = 12), Expressive Dysphasic (N = 21), Language Delay (N = 57), and Deviant Articulation (N = 30). Verbal ability at the time of entry to the school was compared with verbal ability when the remedial programme ended. The Receptive Dysphasic, Expressive Dysphasic, and Language Delay groups showed significant gains in verbal ability. The language development of the Deviant Articulation group was within normal limits at the time of entry and showed no significant gain. 35.8% of the children were able to return to mainstream education before reaching the statutory school-leaving age.

Interactions between parent and child in joint picture-book reading have received considerable interest in studies of normal language acquisition. Less attention has been paid to the language-disabled child in this context. This single case study looks at the interaction between a severely impaired language learner and his professional caregiver during an episode of joint book reading. An examination is made of the nature of the interaction, the incidence of labelling, and the types of clarification requests used. It is shown that this context provides a framework within which a dialogue is developed between child and adult, with both contributing to the initiation of topics. These are then extended by means ofpredominantly open-ended question forms on the part of the caregiver. Future case studies are recom mended of individuals with different levels of language disorder, and the implications for practice are discussed.