Contributions from: Miquel Serra - Spain, Jan de Jong - Netherlands, James Law, Julie Dockrell & Geoff Lindsay - UK.
Abstract
This symposium aims to address key issues in the education and development of children with language difficulties (also known as specific language impairment, SLI). The Symposium will begin with a brief introduction from Gina Conti-Ramsden. The Symposium itself has three keynote speakers. Miquel Serra from Spain will be talking about intervention with young children with language disorders. His work is based on a large research project carried out in Barcelona. Julie Dockrell from London will be talking about learning to write and children with language difficulties. The overlap between oral language difficulties and literacy difficulties will be an important topic of this presentation. James Law from City University will talk about pre-school children with language difficulties and the key issues involved with young children who are on the verge of starting school.
The Symposium will close with a discussion by Geoff Lindsay followed by a full participatory discussion with those attending the symposium.
A longitudinal study of 3 to 6 years old children with SLI:
Communication in the class and language intervention
Miquel Serra
From the results of a three year longitudinal study of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and Language Delay (LD) some ideas and preliminary conclusions will be discussed.
1. Individual communication with children is necessary in order to identify those children that have normal intelligence and social adaptation but have no expressive (or language comprehension) resources; (generally only children with other clinical or psychological difficulties, or speech problems are identified).
2. Once known, these children with very little language (and with speech delay) their linguistic development has to be followed. Linguistic development can be tracked by the ability to progressively include verbs (and prepositions) in their mental representation and verbal output. Adequate explanation of events and avoidance of omissions and inclusion of argument structures are all markers of progress.
3. If language development (not only speech) during this first year does not reach a language level of 2,6 to 3 (control over verbs and arguments in simple sentences) a referral to a Language Unit is recommended. It is well known that if intervention in a Language Unit is started at four, there are great advantages. These advantages are quantified and demonstrated by the figures obtained in the project: Many children are simply LD and they improve along normal development and by 6 they do not need any more therapy (if they had started later probably they would have consolidated their difficulties). The few SLI children still talk very simply and make many omissions and errors but they can be understood by their classmates and teachers. In one to two years of therapy (centred in event analysis and expression) they can learn many template sentences, many general verbs that can combine with a sufficient lexical repertoire, and the best of all, they improve their tuning between thinking and language and they select with care the information to be expressed, avoiding incomprehensible utterances and omissions. There is a small number of children with SLI that will need therapy for longer term.
The written language skills of children with specific language
impairment
Julie Dockrell & Clare Mackie
Written language is a fundamental skill to access the curriculum and to succeed in education and the work place. Children who experience difficulties with written language are in danger of encountering continued academic failure and wider difficulties in learning. This study examines the written language skills of a group of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Eleven children with diagnosed language problems and normal non-verbal intelligence participated in the study. Children were between 9:8- 12:3 years. They were matched in terms of their language skills with typically developing children. Both groups of children completed the language assessment measure and a standardised written assessment, which involved composing a story, from a single stimulus picture. Children's productivity, syntax, spelling and content were assessed. Significant differences were found for levels of productivity, SLI children wrote shorter stories, made more spelling and syntax errors than their language matched peers. Specific differences were found involving the omission of verbs and verbal morphology. In contrast no differences were found for content of written stories. The findings indicate that there is a specific relationship between the oral language problems of children diagnosed with SLI and their corresponding written language difficulties. Implications for intervention are considered .
A population perspective on primary speech and language delay: A
systematic review of the literature
James Law
The presentation will summarise the key results of a systematic review commissioned by the NHS in the UK (http://www.soton.ac.uk/~hta). The review focuses on children with primary speech and language delay in the 0-7 years range. The number of potential cases of primary speech and language delay is high (median= 5.95%). A substantial proportion of children with expressive delays are likely to have difficulties which resolve spontaneously in the pre-school period. However, the data do not make it possible to predict at the time of identification which of the children are likely to have persistent problems, although data from treated samples suggest it is easier once children reach primary school.
The results of intervention studies reveal positive and statistically significant effects of intervention relative to untreated controls. Comparable results for direct (clinician administered) and indirect treatment were observed in the cases of expressive language. Direct intervention was more effective for speech delays. The data reviewed do not provide information about long term outcomes, nor of the likelihood of intervention reducing prevalence in a given population. The screening data indicate that it is easier to determine who is not a case than to establish who is. There have been no explicit attempts to benchmark the target population in terms of prevalence estimates, in terms of the prediction of case status or in terms of the impact of the intervention.
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