School Age Overview Flashcards
Learning a word
-Need to map it 3-5 times
The Marvel of Language
- The father of a newborn says “he likes it”, and everyone agrees (we ascribe intent)
- By 12 months of age, the first word(s) appear(s)
- A child of 3-4 years of age has acquired the major components of his/her language
- At school age, the child: kindergarten kids
—-Varies speech to fit socio-communicative needs of any situation
—-Knows & pronounces thousands of words
—-Is skilled at production of complex grammatical forms
-Language learning NEVER stops- even at 85 you can learn new words
Definitions of Language
- “socially shared code or conventional system for representing concepts through the use of arbitrary symbols and rule-governed combination of those symbols”
- Language- an arbitrary but systematic set of symbolic relationships mutually agreed upon by a speech community to designate experiences. (her favorite definition)
Need to think about how functional kids are. Do they understand that language is used to designate experiences.
Language
Language :
- is generative & productive
- is symbolic—doesn’t need to be exact representation of object/action: ABSTRACT
- demonstrates displacement (not tied to here & now)
- There are multiple modalities: oral, written, sign/gesture
- need to do the whole package for school age kids. Standardized test only look at oral language.
- School-age language (and beyond) is very complex!
-Language constantly changes. Language impaired children do not understand
slang or how to use it. A lot of language impaired kids have not figured out language.
Semantics
Ever changing:
-Stall talker- on the phone in the bathroom
- Drailing- drunken emailing
- E-mnesia-forgot you sent email
- words disappear over time
School-age Children (old assumptions)
- Everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten (the critical period hypothesis) most by age 12
- Critical periods for acquisition, neurological shut down (again, CPH)
- MLU says it all- 4
Critical period hypothesis
- if you don’t have things learned by a certain age, 5 or 12 then you will never have it (not true).
- We know that Neuropathways can be regenerated.
- Basic language learning occurs by age 3 or 4
Reality of school age children
- Reality: language learning never stops
-New technology keeps extending the
age of neurological maturation
-MLU was great through age 4 (ish),
but can’t account for complex syntax
Assumptions and practices
- “Professionals seem to assume that, if the students did not learn the first time around, they will never learn.”
- Students are blamed for not learning, rather than examining instructional practices. (could be the teaching style, not necessarily the student
Problems w/ older school age children
- Therapy & assessment based on adult models (e.g. word-finding therapy)
- Can’t use the same therapy for an adult that had a stroke as a child with word finding issues because the child has a much smaller vocabulary and has limited words mapped.
- Looking for fixed developmental sequences based on preschool language acquisition milestones
- 1st word-12 months
- 2 word combos- 18 months w/ 50 words
- Looking for large, clear differences between age level as in preschool models but:
- norms are scarce!!
- show smaller differences in average performance
- show greater variability.
Older kids need meta skills across communication domains (Problems w/ older school age children)
Pragmatics Semantics Syntax Phonology morphology
Current Professional Practices
-SLP’s should assess reading and writing skills and support development of skills when identified as delayed, according to ASHA’s Preferred Practice Patterns
Failure of Brown’s MLU Stage V
- Statistics in our field suggest
- Many children identified, treated and released as preschoolers “pop up” again in mid elementary school (3rd grade usually)
- Many kids transition into school with identified speech and language needs
- Other kids are first identified in mid-elementary
- Achieving Stage V is no guarantee of “normal” language ability
- In third grade a lot of kids will have issues again.
- RTI- response to intervention, prevents student from getting intervention immediately.
Learning Disabilities
- As defined by association of LD: significant difficulty in the acquisition and/or use of reading, writing, speaking, listening, math and social skills
- LD definition dates from late 1970’s
- Social skills added later
- Wallach & Butler suggested “language learning disabled” term (LLD)
- Usually have problems following math instructions
- Difference between LD and typical kids is that it is automatic for typical kids. We need to teach LI kids how to get the automaticity of language.
- You need to be able to ready fluidly and with automaticity in order to comprehend.
Learning disabilities as defined by IDEA
- As defined by IDEA: disorder in one or more processes involved in understanding or using spoken or written language
- Manifestations may include imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or do mathematical calculations
- LLD still fits
- NOTE: this is not an IDEA classification, but SLPs should understand that many (most?) LD students will have language problems in school contexts
- These difficulties are not always identified by standardized tests
- Spelling issues could be due to poor phonemic awareness.
