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 540-551

at the advanced language level,some tests particularly helpful in this regard include the following:

test of word knowledge:assesses aspects of lexical skill including definitions,synonyms, antonyms,metalinguistics,and figurative language.

test of adolescent and adult language:provides broad assessment of syntactic forms in the listening grammar,speaking grammar,reading grammar,and writing grammar subtests.

clinical evaluation of language fundamentals:the following sentences,recalling sentences,and sentence assembly subsets tap various aspects of grammatical production.

test of language development intermediate:the sentence combining and word ordering subsets have shown good correlations with production in spontaneous discourse.

test of written language:measures structural elements in writing in students to age 17.

comprehensive assessment of spoken language:measures semantic,syntactic,pragmatic,and supralinguistic aspects of language

oral and written language scales:measures written expression,oral expression,and listening comprehension for children ages 5-21.

criterion-referenced assessment and behavioral observation in the advanced language stage

standardized tests are needed to establish eligibility for services but are limited in their ability to serve as a basis for intervention planning.

the ability to write more-or-less grammatical sentences,to spell with some degree of accuracy,and to organize a sequence of thoughts and express them somewhat comprehensibly.

semantics

the literate lexicon

three main avenues of vocabulary learning for older students:

direct instruction

contextual abstraction is the ability to infer the meaning of a new word from the linguistic cues that accompany it.

morphological analysis

word retrieval

word definitions

word relations

figurative language(we can give students practice hearing,reading,interpreting,talking about, and creating figuative forms in a variety of contexts to increase both comprehension and metalinguistic awareness of these modes of expression)

semantic integrateion

verbal reasonin(the language of thinking-used to solve problems,to plan,organize,predict, speculate,and hypothesize-becomes a major function of communication in the advanced language stage.

syntax and morphology

comprehension

production

sampling contexts for literate language

eliciting narrative samples

eliciting expository samples

using written samples to assess syntactic complexity

T-unit length

clause density

use of literate language structures

prompts for eliciting oral exposition in adolescents(p.551)

task 1:

favorite game or sport:

1.can you tell me about your favorite game or sport?

2. why is that your favorite?

3.i don't know too much about that.can you tell me about it?tell me about the rules,how many people play,what the object of the game is.tell me whatever you can think of about it, so that someone like me who has never played before would know how.

4.what do you have do do to win this game?are there some strategies that a good player shoudl know?

task 2:

peer conflict resolution:

1.introduction:everyone has to work out problems with other people sometimes.i'am going to read you a story about these kinds of problems,then i'll ask you to tell the story back to me and answer some questions about it.

2.please tell the story back to me in your own words.tell me everything you can remember.

3.here are some questions to answer about the story:

a.what is the main problem?

b.why is that a problem?

c.what is a good way for sb to deal with sb.

d.why is that a good way?

e.what do you think will happen if sb does that?

f.how do you think they both will feel if sb does that?

high-level,low frequency structural markers of advanced syntax (p.550)

prefixes and suffixes(unplanned,replay,helpless,requirement)

nonminalization non forms of verbs (adaptation,establishment)

use of past and present participle forms of verbs as adjectives(her broken CD player,a growing plant)

later developing conjunctions(otherwise,instead,after all,only,still,though,anyway,in all, finally,when because)

adverbial sentence connectives conjuncts(nevertheless,furthermore,therefore,for example, in addition)

NP pre-modification with two or more adjectives(her cute,black puppy)

NP post-modification with:

past participles(a tree called the willow)

present participles(a machine controlling his brain)

infinitives(a good way to fish)

appositives(mr.smith,the mail carrier)

relative clauses(a woman who lives nearby)

elaboration(dogs such as collies,spaniels,and german shepherds)

prepositional phrases(the cyclist in the lead position)

multiple auxiliaries(we could have missed it)

perfect aspect(we had been studying all night)

passive voice(the house was designed by a famous architect)

with adjectives(extremely large)

adverbial phrases(awfully quickly)

more than one clause type in a sentence(he wants to pass,but he doesn't know how to study)

left branching clause clauses that appear near the beginning of the sentence(getting into college won't be hard fo amy to do)

preposed adverbial clauses(after we study,we'll go for pizza)

center-embedded relative clauses(the boy who sits behind me in english is cute)

noun clauses as subjects(passing mr.haywood's class in tough)

sentences using word order variations for theme and focus,such as cleft sentences(to get a C in biology is an accomplishment;it was our team that won the game;the one who got there first was the winner;what i really want is a different english teacher)