1. Specific Language Impairment Receptive and Expressive Language
September 2017
Amy Jones, M.S. CCC-SLP
Strategies for Students with Language Impairment
Sentence Starters
Students with expressive language difficulties benefit tremendously from sentence starters. For example, during class discussions write or even verbally model a sentence starter, “I liked this book because…” Another great starter for conversation is, “Over the weekend I…”
Visuals
Another biggie for students with language impairments is visuals. This can take the form of pictures, photographs or written prompts. Visuals help trigger ideas and vocabulary that may be difficult for a language impaired student to access without support. Work with your SLP to find and create visuals that are a good fit for your student.
One Direction at a Time
For students with receptive language difficulties, giving one concrete direction at a time is essential. For example, instead of , “clean up and get ready for reading” try, “put the materials away,” “go sit at your desk,” “take out your book for reading.”
Semantic Prompts
Students with word finding and vocabulary difficulties benefit from creating word and thought associations. If a student is struggling with expressing or comprehending something, try to prompt with a semantic clue they can relate to or have prior knowledge of.
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Specific Language Impairment
A specific language impairment or SLI is described by difficulties with language comprehension or expression that is not caused by a known neurological, sensory, intellectual or emotional deficit.
Difficulties in language skills will often manifest in the following areas:
Phonology: difficulties learning the speech sound system; poor phonological awareness skills.
Morphology: difficulties with internalizing and utilizing morphological markers during expression or written assignments.
Semantics: poor vocabulary skills, slow to acquire new words, may often use fillers such as “um” or “uh” when searching for appropriate words.
Syntax: Grammatical difficulties at the sentence level, challenges with word order or production of shorter length utterances during discourse.
Pragmatics: challenges in social language skills, often caused by the above language skill deficits.
Receptive and Expressive Language
SLP’s typically categorize language difficulties by the effect they have on either receptive or expressive communication.
Receptive Language is characterized by comprehension skills or understanding what is said to you. Difficulties in this area may include:
Following directions
Listening comprehension
Comprehending linguistic concepts
Expressive Language is oral expression or verbalization (separate from articulation & intelligibility). Difficulties in this area may include:
Vocabulary use
Sentence composition
Word finding
Children with SLI typically exhibit difficulties in both areas; however, may have isolated weakness in one or the other.
Story comprehension
Comprehending prepositions
Narrative formation or retell
Answering questions
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (n.d.). Spoken Language Disorders. (Practice Portal). March, 28, 2016, from
SPHS Rm 916-A (Guidance Office) – (662) ;