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 347-357

intervention policy issues at the developing language level

individualized educational plans

intervention settings

family-centered practic(we need to remember that every family is different;有些家長have the time and energy to devote to delivering the intervention;有些家長may want to do samll amounts of "homework"to follow up on what is being done in the intervention setting;  有些家長may just want periodic updates on the childs's progress;althouth we always want to encourage families to be as involved as possible and set up the intervention situation so that they can achieve this level of involvement,we never want to make families feel inadequate about the level of contribution they can make)

families are very likely to have feelings and opinions about areas in which they would like their child to show improvement.

intervention for developing language:products,processess,and contexts

intervention products:goals for children with developing language

to help the child acquire intelligible,grammatical,flexible forms of expression for the ideas and concepts the child has in mind,to enable the child to understand others,to give the child the tools to make communication effective,efficient,and rewarding so that social interaction proceeds as normally as possible,and to strengthen the oral language basis for success in literacy.

milestones of normal communicative development:preschool years

phonology(increase consonant repertoire;increase production of closed syllables;decrease use of phonological processes;increase production of multisyllabic words;increase accuracy of sound production;increase intelligibility)

we need to remember,too,that speech sound and language disorders often co-exist in the same child.

semantics(increase vocabulary size;increase use of verbs for specific actions(sweep,slide, bend,fold,etc.;increase appropriate pronoun use;increase understanding and use of basic concept vocabulary(spatial term,temporal terms,diectic terms,kinship terms,color terms, etc.;increase range of semantic relations expressed within sentences(possession,recurrence, location,etc,;increase use of appropriate conjunctions(but,so,etc.)

syntax(increase sentence length;increase sentence complexity use of prepositional phrase, noun modifiers,verb marking,etc.;increase use of apprpriate auxiliary verbs can,will,must, have,is,are,etc.;increase use of copula verbs is,am,was,were,etc.;increase understanding of word order in sentences)

morphology(increase use of simple morphemes on nouns plural,possessives,etc.;increase use of verb markers tense,number,aspect,ect.;increase use of higher-level morphemes -er,-est,etc.;increase appropriate use of articles a,an,the)

pragmatics(increase use of verbal forms of communication;increase use of language to ahcieve communicative goals;increase flexibility of language forms for various context; increase ability to initiate communication with appropriate forms;expand range of communicative intentions expressed with a variety of language forms;increase ability to maintain conversational topic;increase ability to manage conversational turn-taking,topic-shifting;begin to use various genres of language e.g.,narration;increase ability to make and request conversational repair)

play and thinking(increase ability to use objects to represent others;increase use of pretend and imaginative play;increase play that involves social role-playing;increase ability to use language to foster abstract thought;increase ability to use language to negotiate peer interactions;increase ability to use language to self-monitor and inhibit aggressive behavior)

preliteracy(listen to stories;talk about pictures and events in books;look at books independently;orient book properly,turn pages;recognize words in print e.g.,find first word on a page,count words on a page;recognize parts of books:pages.title,orientation of print; begin to develop metalinguistic and phonological awareness;develop awareness of rhyme; count syllables in words;sing alphabet songs;identify letters;begin to be able to segment words into syllable and sound units;know what a word is;identify words that start/end with the same sound;count sounds in words;match sounds and letters)

phonological awareness activities for use in a phonological production program at the developing language level

developing rhyming skills

develop awareness of syllables

develop awareness of first/last sounds in words

develop phonological synthesis skills 

semantic

as we introduce new vocabulary,it make sense to highlight both semantic("triangle is the name of this shape;it's a shape that has three sides;a piece of pizza is shaped like a triangle")and phonological("triangles hasve three sides and tri an gle has three parts;triangle starts with the same sound as toy) aspects of the word.

it is important not only to teach basic words.but to expose students to rare words,as well.

conversational input from an adult emphasizing use of rare words,linguistic recasts,and open-ended questions increased expressive vocabulary in children with low levels of vocabulary development.

helping children broaden the range of ideas they can talk about.

only one new thing at a time;

when asking a child to produce a more complex sentence form,we want to be sure if it encodes a meaning that the child has already expressed in a simpler way;

when asking the child to talk about a new meaning or combine new meanings in sentences,we need to control for syntactic complexity,making sure that the form we want the client to use in producing this new meaning is already within the production repertoire.

syntax and morphology

comprehension versus production targets

principles of goal selection for grammatical targets in the developing lanugage period

1.main goal of grammatical intervention:help the child understand and use syntax in the service of communication.

2.goal attainment must be measured in real communication contexts(conversation or narration)

3.producing a target at 90% correct in a clinician directed activity is not enough;form must be used in real communication.

4.grammar is rarely the only aspect of language that needs to be targeted in an intervention program for DL children ,who often have small vocabularies,social problems,and often grow to be children with reading disorders

5.children with most obvious errors in sentence structure are likely to need support in other areas of communication:preliteracy;pragmatic skills;vocabulary

6.contexts such as guided play.mediated conversation,and storybook sharing should be considered.

7.select goals that trigger changes both within and outside the therapy context:look for,not just single goals,but always to change patterns of language

8.base goals on "functional readiness"and the communicative need for targeted forms, target grammatical forms:that the child used correctly on occasion;for which obligatory contexts appear in the child's language,these are more likely to show change than are forms the child does not have any experience with

9.children with language disorders need more experience than others to master grammatical forms:focus on emerging forms to help move them toward mastery more efficiently;provide frequent and intensive exposure and practice of these forms.

pragmatics

we see language not as a set of rules to be learned,but as a tool for communication.

learning language is not just learning sounds,words,and sentence structures;it's also learning how to get things done in the real world with those sounds,words,and sentence.

play and thinking

help the children to generalize the intervention targets to meaningful situations;move the child into the zone of proximal development,providing a scaffold that helps the child to use language to achieve new levels of symbolic and conceptual development with our models and support.

preliteracy

strong oral language,phonological awareness,understanding about print,alphabet knowledge, invented spelling,rapid naming,and a child's ability to write his or her own name prior to kindergarten are all indicators of literacy success in school.

domains for preliteracy intervention

phonological awareness

segment words in sentences(teacher has children in group clap for each word in a poem)

segment syllables in words(teacher has children stamp once for each syllable in words)

produce rhymes(teacher rereads familiar rhyming book,and has children fill in blanks (stop, you must not hop on ____!")

synthesize words form syllables(teacher introduces "robot"puppet who only speaks syllable by syllable(mo tor cy cle).children must guess word he means.)

synthesize words form sounds(teacher introduces "alien"puppet who only speaks sound by sound(/d//a//g/).children must guess word he means)

identify words with same beginning/end sound(teacher has children stand up,clap,or wave each time they hear a word with a target beginning/ending sound in a story or poem being read)

print concepts

book reading conventions(teacher occasionally holds book upside down or backwards;children demonstrate correct orientation)

understand metalinguistic terms words,letter,sound(adult demonstrates elements form storybooks "here's a long word;do you see this letter?")

link text to experience(teacher encourages children to make personal connections to storybook themes "sam i am doesn't like green eggs and ham.how many of you like eggs?ham?how mamy don't?")

recognize environmental print(teacher shows photographs of print in the environment or from field trips;asks children to find the word that says"stop" etc.)

alphabet knowledge

alphabet song(teacher begins each day w/choral singing of alphabet song,pointing out each letter on a chart as children sing.eventually,children are given turns to do the pointing.)

recognize own name in print,and the letters in it(children's names are used as labels throughout the classroom;the are encouraged to identify their name on their cup,coat,hook, etc.,and point out the letters of their name)

recognize letters in environmental print(children are given a card with a letter and encouraged to find words on a field trip or in photos of steet scenes that start with their letter.

sort upper and lower case letters(toys are labeled with letters;children are encouraged to place toys in boxes with matching letters)

write own name(children are given multiple opportunities to form their names with plastic letters,tiles,letter cards,as well as to trace and write their names.)

narrative and literacy language

retell stories heard(children reenact stories heard,with simple costumes and props)

use causal conjunctions in story retells(children are asked to respond to questions about why events in the story took place and are prompted to use causal language,such as "because")

use mental and linguistic verbs in story retells (teacher encourages students to talk about what characters are saying and thinking in stories they have heard)