How do we communicate?

2

Means of

communication

Verbal

Speech / language

Non-verbal

Vocal Non-vocal

Is it all about words??

5

Language

“Language is a code that we use to express our thoughts”

6

Language skills

• Understand Receptive skills

• Speak Expressive skills

• Interact Pragmatic skills

Language1

Meaning

Content

Semantics

2

Word structure

Morphology

3

Grammar

Syntax

4

Speech Sounds

Phonology

There are two cupcakes on the table.

Language

5

Use of language

Pragmatics

6

Conversation skills

Speaker

Listener

7

Story telling

Narrative Skills

It refers to the content (meaning).

• Lexicon

• Word classification

• Categorization

• Synonyms & antonyms (opposites)

1- Content / Meaning / Semantics

It refers to grammar.

• Prepositions

• Conjunctions

• Plurals

• Verb tense

• Pronouns

2- Grammar / Syntax

It refers to the structure or form of words.

• Morpheme

• happy

• unhappy

• unhappily

3- Word form / Morphology

It is the study of phonemes/speech sounds

• Consonants & vowels

• Awareness & production

4- Speech sounds / Phonology

It refers to the use of language in social context / situations. It is knowing what to say, how to say it, when to say it-and how to "be" with other people.

• Intentionality• Non-verbal communication; eye contact, body

movements, body posture• Speech intonation (melody)• Narrative skills• Pre-suppositional knowledge

5- Use of language / Pragmatics

1. Initiating conversation2. Taking turns3. Knowing when it is convenient to interrupt others4. Inferring information indirect or non-mentioned info5. Asking for clarification6. Self-repairing whenever necessary7. Being ware of the listener’s needs8. Providing necessary details9. Attentively listening to the conversational partner

6- Conversation skills

1. Providing an introductory sentence

2. Maintaining topic described

3. Sequencing ideas so that listener can follow

4. Being relevant

5. Being specific

6. Providing details whenever necessary

7. Giving appropriate endings

7- Story telling / Narrative Skills

17

Speech parameters

• Speech sounds production

• Speech rate

• Fluency

• Resonance (Nasality)

• Speech intelligibility (Clarity)

Importance of Language Skills in

Literacy Development

• An assumption of our educational system is that by the time children start school, the

majority are competent users of their native language.

“Competent users of language”

means that :

They can listen to what people say to them and understand.

They can follow instructions.

They can speak clearly.

They can use language to express their needs.

They can convey a message to someone else.

They can take turns in conversations.

• Berninger refers to basic academic skills in terms of the neuropsychological systems or modes through which language is accessed and/or expressed:

• Language by ear (listening)

• Language by mouth (speaking)

• Language by eye (reading) –Language by hand (writing)

Your Turn !

• What are the RED FLAGS of speech and language delay ??

Language based academic difficulties

• problems with age-appropriate reading, spelling, and/or writing. This disorder is not about how smart a person is. Most people diagnosed with learning disabilities have average to superior intelligence.

It is still your turn !

What are the Red flags of language based academic difficulties?

They have difficulties with the following :

• Expressing ideas clearly, as if the words needed are on the tip of the tongue but won't come out. What the child says can be vague and difficult to understand (e.g., using unspecific vocabulary, such as "thing" or "stuff" to replace words that cannot be remembered). Filler words like "um" may be used to take up time while the child tries to remember a word.

• Learning new vocabulary that the child hears (e.g., taught in lectures/lessons) and/or sees (e.g., in books)

• Understanding questions and following directions that are heard and/or read

• Recalling numbers in sequence (e.g., telephone numbers and addresses)

• Understanding and retaining the details of a story's plot or a classroom lecture

• Reading and comprehending material

• Learning words to songs and rhymes

• Telling left from right, making it hard to read and write since both skills require this directionality

• Identifying the sounds that correspond to letters, making learning to read difficult

• Mixing up the order of letters in words while writing

• Spelling

A delay or a disorder?

• Abnormal versus slow

• Speech versus Language

• Global delay versus second language acquisition

Language impairment

Any deviation in one or more of the following language components perceived to be outside the allowable range for an individual’s communication competence and not related to dialect or linguistic/cultural background. A language impairment adversely affects the student’s education performance as reflected by his/her social interaction, behavior, emotional development, vocational performance, communication, and/or participation in classroom activities as well as academic achievement. These components may involve the form of language (phonology, morphology and syntax), the content of language (vocabulary, semantics), and/or the functional use of language (pragmatics)

How to diagnose?

• Informal versus formal assessments

• The most commonly used assessment tools

• CELF

• CELF Pre-school

CAPD

What is Auditory Processing?

• What happens when your brain recognizes and interprets the sounds around you.

• Humans hear sound through the ear and is then interpreted by the brain.

• The "disorder" part of auditory processing disorder means that something is affecting the processing or interpretation of the information.

AttentionProcessing

ComprehensionMemory

Where is the breakdown??

• CAPD can occur with or without hearing loss

• CAPD may run in families

• CAPD can affect a person's ability to interact socially

• Children with CAPD typically have normal intelligence

• Many of the difficulties that are experienced by people with CAPD are also common to people with ADD and hearing impairments

• Poor expressive or receptive language

• Difficulty with reading comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary

• Difficulty following long conversations

• Problems understanding or remembering orally-presented information

• Difficulty following verbal directions especially when involving multi-step directions

• Difficulty learning a foreign language or challenging vocabulary words

• Decreased comprehension in noisy environments

• Difficulty repeating words or numbers in sequence

• Difficulty with phonics or speech sounds

• Sound Localization and Lateralization refers to the ability to know where a sound has occurred in space.

Auditory Discrimination refers to the ability to distinguish one sound from another. The term is most often used for distinguishing speech sounds, such as phoneme /p/ from phoneme /t/ as in “hop” and “hot”. Sound/Symbol Association is the ability to associate a symbol (i.e., a letter) with a sound such as “s” with the sound “ssss”.

• Temporal Auditory Processing is the ability to integrate a sequence of sounds into words or other meaningful combinations or perceive sounds as separate when they quickly follow one another.

Auditory Figure Ground refers to the ability to perceive the main message when other sounds are present (e.g., understanding a conversation while the TV is on). Tolerance-Fading Memory refers to weak short –term memory for auditory presented information; this difficulty frequently occurs in the presence of distracting sounds.

• Students who are learning to speak two languages follow particular patterns of learning. The sounds of the first language can influence how children learn and use a second language. It is easier to learn sounds and words when the languages you are learning are similar. Over time, the more difficult sounds and words will be learned.

Bilingualism

• How does the brain acquire the second language?

• English versus Arabic assessment???

• English versus Arabic language therapy??

Writing – There’s more to it than meets the eye!

Writing is Language by Hand

Reading is Language by Eye

Multiple Brain MechanismsInvolved in the Writing Process

Writing requires the simultaneous and sequential integration of many sub-processes

Writing

Executive Functions

Attention

Organization/Planning and Revising

Working Memory

Language and

Higher Order

Cognition

Vocabulary

Semantics

Memory

Spelling Patterns

Motor Memory

Integration of

Multiple

Information

Sources

Gross and Fine

Motor Skill

Handwriting

Impact on Writing

Subcomponents of the language system;

phonology, the lexicon, grammar, and pragmatics

(Hirsh-Pasek, Kochanoff, Newcombe, & de Villiers,

2005), leads to the clear prediction that these

components will all impact on the production of

written texts and could do so at different

developmental phases.

Phonological Processes and Spelling

At the single word level, phonological processes

impact directly on children’s spelling

development, the mastery of which is a

prerequisite to extended text generation

(Graham, Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, &

Whitaker,1997).

Oral Language and Text Generation

Poor oral language skills are associated with

difficulties in fluently producing words and

clauses in text and are more generally

associated with reduced compositional quality

(Berninger & Fuller, 1992; Berninger et al., 1992).

Limitations with oral vocabulary and oral narrative

performance are related to poor written text

production (Cragg & Nation, 2006).

Limited Vocabulary Word Knowledge

The reduced lexical knowledge experienced by

some children with language difficulties may

impact directly on the children’s written

outputs.

Limits in vocabulary are likely to influence both

the length and content of the written texts of

children.

Difficulties with Syntax

Morphology and syntactic difficulties may

manifest themselves in writing through the

construction of simple rather than complex

sentences and the omission of prepositions,

articles, and verbs.

The texts are, therefore, expected to contain

high levels of grammatical errors and reflect

Immature sentence constructions.

‘ed’ as a Clinical Marker

Zero marking of ‘-ed’ in writing was claimed by

Windsor et al. (2000) as a clinical marker of the

writing of children with language

Impairment since typical children do not show

difficulties with ‘-ed’ beyond the age of 8 or 9

years (Carlisle, 1996,Nunes, Bryant, &

Bindman,1997).

Intervention

The ultimate goal of intervention is to establish

which method is the most effective, for which

areas of language, for which children, using

which method of delivery.

• the most important variables within the children are likely to be: age, severity and pervasiveness of language difficul- ties and any co-occurring difficulties.

Intervention

When considering different methods of delivery,

the variables include:

• who or what delivers the therapy – e.g. speech and language therapist (SLT), SLT assistant, teaching assistant (TA), teacher, parent, computer.

• whether the therapy is delivered 1:1 (one-to-one) or with other children.

Remediation of Low-Level Skills

As long as translating continues to place heavy demandson writing the management of planning will be impaired.

• Approaches to supporting translation skills are therefore a basic prerequisite to any intervention program.

• Handwriting (or word processing) and spelling need to be, at least, partly automated to open the way up for pupils to develop text production.

Once some automaticity is established pupils can movefrom word and sentence level to the development of textstructures and planning and revision.

Study Skills

• Recognizing & formulating main ideas (stated & implied)

• Note-taking

• Summarizing

• Paraphrasing

Applying Study Skills to Expository Texts

• Read the passage.

• Identify new vocabulary

• Highlight main ideas & underline supporting details/keywords

• Put them in two-column notes

• Write your own summary

Planning ConsiderationsA. Planning for Long-Range Balance in writing tasks.

1. Writing for different purposes or functions and about different

topics.

Language Arts

Science Social Studies

Other

Descriptive writing

Persuasive writing

Expository writing

Narrative writing

Expressive writing

Poetic writing

Planning for Long-Range Balance in writing tasks.2. Teaching structure in order to help students focus directly on organization.

Topic: --------------------------------------

Controlling idea: ---------------------------------------------------

Topic sentence: ----------------------------------------------------

Supporting detail 1: --------------------------------------------

Info: -----------------------------------------------

Supporting detail 2: --------------------------------------------Info: ----------------------------------------

Supporting detail 3: --------------------------------------------Info: ----------------------------------------

Supporting detail 4: --------------------------------------------Info: ----------------------------------------

Concluding sentence: ----------------------------------------------

Planning Considerations (cont)B. Planning for Daily Implementation

• Composing time, revision, checking grammar, looking up new words

• Adjustments to the time needed to complete different phases of the writing process

• Greater emphasis must be placed on both planning and editing.

Planning Considerations (cont)C. Planning for Task Success

• Choosing topics: for example persuasive writing must ensure a knowledge of the topic.

• Making the writing task authentic and communicativewhen teachers establish a context and a task they should tell the writer what

is going to be written, why, for whom and any other information necessary Illustration, number of words, format, etc.)

• Providing the support necessary for success in a Second-Language Context:

Lists of high frequency words (nouns, adjectives, words of movement such asverbs). Picture dictionaries. Appropriate graphic organizers

• Complexity of Forms and Rulesie., the amount and complexity of rules that must be kept in mind in order to complete the writing assignment..

Academic Accommodations andRecommendations

• Homework:– Voice recognition or mind-mapping software– Shorter assignments/assignments broken down into

shorter sections with intermediate due dates– Not counting mechanical/spelling errors

• Encourage your writer to map out ideas (prewriting strategies)– There are software programs to help such as Kidspiration

and Inspiration• Reinforce that the first writing attempt is a draft. Writing is a

multi-step process.• Develop strategies to help your child to self-monitor their

work. In partnership with your child, develop a writing process checklist.

Assistive Technologies

• Voice Recognition Computer Software

– Dragon Naturally Speaking

• Mind-Mapping Computer Software

– Inspiration, KidSpiration

• Keyboarding

– Alphasmart

• www.hanen.org

• www.luminosity.com

• www.vocabulary.com