Language Disorders:from Infancy through Adolescence:

Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Communicating

Rhea Paul, PhD, CCC-SLPProfessor, Yale Child Study Center

New Haven, Connecticut

Courtenay F. Norbury, PhD

Senior Research Fellow Department of Psychology Royal Holloway University of London London,England

pages 417-431

child and family in the assessment process

families need to be involved in each stage of the assessment process,from referral to remedial planning,

identifying students for communication assessment

screening

being critical consumers in selecting commercial tests and screening instruments.

a test is published does not mean it has adequate psychometric properties,we need to review the tests we use carefully to ensure they are fair,efficient,and effective,moreover, we should argue for careful consideration of psychometric properties in the selection of any screening instruments our school use,this can help to ensure that we provide assessment services in a fair and appropriate way

RTI,referral,and case finding 

working with language learning disabilities(p.420)

screening for language-based reading disabilities checklist(p.421)

speech sound awareness

written language awareness

letter name knowledge

word retrieval 

speech production/perception

comprehension

expressive language

literacy motivation

monitoring progress in RTI

evaluation for special educational needs

using standardized tests in the L4L stage

three types of standardized tests:comprehensive language batteries,test of pragmatics,and test of learning-ralated language skill.

criterion-referenced assessment and behavior observation in the L4L stage

establishing baseline fuction and identifying targets for intervention.

phonology

oral language skill,such as vocabulary,fluency,text comprehension,and literate language production.

semantics

receptive vocabulary

picture-pointing format

insturctional vocabulary

criterion-referenced assessment of classroom direction vocabulary

clinician:let's pretend you're a soldire.you're a good soldier.you always do what the sergeant says.here's some paperwork the sergeant wants you to take care of.i'll be the sergeant and give some orders.you follow the sergeant's orders and write what the sergeant says to write on this paper,listen carefully,now ! here we go!

1.draw a star in an upper corner of the paper

2.draw a tank on the right-hand side of the paper

3.write today's date

4.number your paper from 1 to 10

5.drwa a line down the left side of the paper

6.put a square in the upper left-hand corner

textbook vocabulary

for some nouns,we may be able to ask the student to identify pictures referring to the words in question in the textbook,words such as planet,solar system,etc.,could be assessed this way,so could geographical terms such as mountain,plateau,and piedmont, which are used in maps or diagrams in social studies texts.

offer several choices and have the student select the best meaning

informal assessement of spatial,temporal,and connective terms(p,426)

make dots above the sticker.

make dots below the sticker

make dots around the sticker

make dots to the right of the sticker

make dots beside the sticker

make dots on the left-hand side of the sticker

temporal terms

make a noise after i say"go"(clinician says"go" after a pause)

make a noise before i say"go"

make a noise while i say go

make a noise as i say go

make a noise when i say go 

connective terms

make a noise if i say go

make a noise although i say go

make a noise unless i say go 

make a noise until i say go

expressive  vocabulary

some students may be able to glean the meaning of an unknow word from its context but would not be able to use the same word appropriately without a more elaborated understanding of it.

lexical diversity

wrod retrieval

other semantic skills

quick incidental learning(fast mapping)

semantic relations between clauses

one of the major changes in children's language in the school years is an increase in the use of sentences that contain more than one proposition,or main idea.

temporal(eat dinner and go to sleep)

causal(go to store and buy shoes)

conditional(eat dinner,go outside)

epistemic(i think draw pink)

notice-perception(show me how to do a somersault)

specification(i have a dog and it's brown)

adverative(the girls sit here and the boys sit there)

syntax and morphology

a strategy for assessing receptive syntax and morphology

general strategy for assessing grammatical comprehension (p.428)

1.use a standardized test of receptive syntax and morphonology to determine deficits in this area

2.if the client performs poorly on the decontextualized criterion-referenced assessments,test the same forms in a contextualized format,providing familiar scripts and nonlinguistic contexts;facial,gestural,and intonational cues;language closely tied to objects in the immediate environment;and expected insturctions.

3.if the child does better in this contextualized format,uses typical strategies,or both,then compare performance on comprehension to production,target forms and structure the child comprehension to production,target forms and structures the child comprehensions well but does not produce as initial targets for a production approach. target structures the child does not comprehend well for focused stimulation or verbal script approaches to work on comprehension and production in tandem.

4.if the child does not do better in the contextualize format and does not use strategies,provide structured input with complexity controlled,using more hybrid and clinician-directed activities for both comprehension and production.

criterion-referenced methods for assessing receptive syntax and morphology

decontextualized methods

picture pointing,behavioral compliance.object manipulation.and judgement.

judgement of semantic acceptability

presenting a series of sentences and having the student tell whether each is "ok"or "silly"

a judgement task for criterion-referenced assessment of comprehension of passive sentences

ok or silly

a boy catches a ball;a boy is carried by a flower;a hot dog is cooked by a girl;a bank is robbed by a man;a girl is paint by a store;an orange is picked by a boy;a boy is lifted by a box;a car is washed by a girl;a cake is carried by a boy;a cake is baked by a lady;a car is started by a man;a man is planted by a flower;a ball is kicked by a girl;a key is turned by a woman;a man is climbed by a fence;a ball is dropped by a woman;a box is opened by a girl;a man is cooked by an egg.

judgement of appropriate interpretation

offer students two interpretations of a sentence and ask them to decide which is correct

example of a judgement of appropriate interpretation activity for decontextualized, criterion-referenced assessment of center-embedded relative clauses

the boy who chased the cow was wearing a hat(was the cow wearing a hat?)

the girl who rode the pony was name sally(was the pony named sally?)

the crook was ran from the police officer was carrying a bag(was the crook carrying a bag?)

assessing use of comprehension strategies

probable-event or probable-order-of-event strategies and word-order or order-of-mention strategies

the dog was fed by the boy,rely on their knowledge of how things usually happen(boys usually feed dogs,rather than vice versa)

assessing comprehension in contextualized settings

if the child is not so good at responding to language in formal contexts,it would be nice to know whether performance is better in more natural situation.

expressive syntax

many of our students with learning-language disorder will not make gross errors in syntax and morphology,but their speech may be simpler and less elaborated than that of their peers.alternatively,it may be more rambling and disorganized,either type of deficit can cause problems by providing an insufficient base both for the understanding of literate language and for age-appropriate writing skills.

collecting a spontaneous speech sample

interview protocol for eliciting a conversational sample from student with learning-languae disorder

introduction

let's talk a little

what can you tell me about your family?

do you have any brothers and sisters?do they ever bother your stuff?

are you in school?tell me about it.

did your teacher ever do anything that really bugged you?

what do you do when you're not in school ?

did you ever get into a argument with a friend?

do you have a favorite sports team?tell me about your favorite player.