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Language Weaknesses Associated with Academic Delays

by C.R. Smith
Source: Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall
Topics: Speech and Language Development, Expressive Language Disorder, Receptive Language Disorder (Auditory Processing Disorder)

Language Comprehension and Production

  • Delayed rate of early language development; trouble naming objects or people
  • Weak auditory memory (recalling digits, words, or sentences)
  • Poor memory for idea units in a dictated story
  • Difficulty with auditory closure (combining sound fragments into whole words)
  • Poor verbal-coding ability (translating nonverbal events into words to aid recall)
  • Poor auditory discrimination of sounds and words; confuses words with similar sounds (frustrate for fluctuate; produces hybrids such as flustrate )
  • Difficulty identifying words masked by background noise (auditory figure-ground problem)
  • Poor story retelling: includes fewer words and ideas, events, grammatically complex sentences, descriptions of internal (seeing, feeling) responses, gerunds and participles; less use of pronouns and conjunctions to make stories cohesive; less mature plot elements (major character, motivating conflict, appropriate sequence); uses pronouns for which referents haven't been specified
  • Less mature verbal associations (such as responding red goes with bird vs. red goes with blue)
  • Trouble understanding ambiguous sentences, proverbs, jokes
  • Poor ability to differentiate statements of information from questions
  • Poor comprehension of long, complex sentences, semantics, and sentence structures
  • Small speaking vocabulary (uses vague and imprecise language); uses simple sentence types and immature linguistic patterns
  • Speech is slow or halting; uses verbal "stalling" mechanisms (uh, urn, you know)
  • Poor knowledge of grammatical rules
  • Weak ability to define words, provide verbal opposites, formulate sentences and converse (conveying directions, elaborate), give logical reasons for common events, classify and compare
  • Poor sequencing of verbal information, as in telling a story from beginning to end
  • Poor understanding of the verbal categories of space and time
  • Poor comprehension and learning of puns, synonyms, homonyms
  • Cluttered and disorganized speech; poor sentence formation
  • Inefficient use of prosodic cues (stress, pitch, pauses) to aid comprehension
  • Minor articulation difficulties
  • Weak comprehension of rapidly spoken language
  • Doesn't modulate tone of voice appropriately; speaks in monotone, or too loud
  • Lower Verbal IQ than Performance IQ

Reading Readiness

  • Mispronounces words (such as aluminum, specific) and phonologically complex phrases (the brown and blue plaid pants)
  • Can't rapidly name pictured objects, colors, shapes, letters, numerals, or events (as in birthday party)
  • Wrong labels given for common objects, people, letters, numerals
  • Insensitive to rhymes and alliterations
  • Doesn't understand Pig Latin game
  • Poor analysis of the order of sounds in words: identifying which words have a common sound at the beginning, end, or in the middle
  • Trouble segmenting words into syllables and sounds
  • Trouble deleting and substituting sounds in words
  • Trouble blending sounds in words
  • Poor listening comprehension
  • Uses hand gestures and body language to help convey messages
  • Does not understand or remember instructions

Reading Decoding

  • Problem associating letters with sounds
  • Makes sound-sequencing errors, as in reading snug for sung
  • Sound-sequencing problems cause word analysis problems in reading
  • Slow reading (due to slow sound retrieval and sequencing)
  • Oral reading deteriorates within a few sentences (due to declining ability to retrieve sounds from memory)
  • Poor comprehension of what has been read due to language comprehension weaknesses

Writing

  • Spelling can be bizarre (not phonetic)
  • Short and incomplete written assignments; brief sentences and limited vocabulary
  • Poorly organized ideas in written assignments; not logically presented
  • Little theme development; writes bare lists of facts or events rather than developing ideas, characters, or plot

Math

  • Slow on math fact drills due to retrieval problems (word-finding problem)
  • Difficulty with word problems due to poor language comprehension
  • Problems with higher-level math due to difficulties with analysis and logical reasoning

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