1. Department of Special Education
SPED 780
Class 4
Language
Judith Mack, MSEd, MSW
Adjunct Lecturer
Department of Special Education

2. Agenda What is language? Connection between LD and language
Speech and language impairments
Discussion of Culture and Language

3. Turn & Talk: What do you know?
Describe what you know about the topic already.
What are some classroom situations/students that come to mind when you consider the topic?
What are some questions you have about the topic?
What do you want to know more about?

4. Chapter Outline What is language?
Are language problems common in learning disabilities?
What are the elements of spoken language and characteristics of students with learning disabilities in spoken language?
How are spoken language abilities assessed?
How can spoken language problems be addressed?

5. Small Group Definitions
What Is Language?
Small Group Definitions

6. What Is Language?
Language is a socially shared code or conventional system for representing concepts through the use of arbitrary symbols and rule-governed combination of those symbols.
Language is a mode for communicating thoughts and ideas.

7. What Is Language?
Language is a made up of various modes and three linguistic elements.
Paralinguistic elements – intonation, stress or emphasis, speed of delivery and pauses
Nonlinguistic elements – “body language”
Metalinguistic elements – the thinking and talking about language as well as the analysis of language

8. Are Language Problems Common in Learning Disabilities?
The definition of learning disability in IDEA:
“In general—the term ‘specific learning disability’ means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using the language, spoken or written.”
(IDEA S. 1248, Sec 602(29)(A), 2003) \

9. Clarifying Terms Associated with Language
Speech – is the physical productions of sounds for communication.
Language – is the socially shared code with rules used to represent topics.
Communication – is the process of encoding, transmitting, and decoding language to express ideas.

10. Language can be divided into two major categories
What Are the Elements of Spoken Language and Characteristics of Students with Learning Disabilities in Spoken Language?
Language can be divided into two major categories
Receptive language – the listener’s behavior
Expressive language – the production of language
More students with learning disabilities have difficulty in this area.
Problems with expression include:
Dysnomia
Dysarthia
Apraxia

11. Phonology Phonology – the study of the sound system of language
Phoneme – the smallest unit of sound
Example:
sin /s/ /i/ /n/ (3 phonemes)
thin /th/ /i/ /n/ (3 phonemes)
thing /th/ /i/ /ng/ (3 phonemes)

12. Phonology
Problems with phonology involve the production of speech and are referred to as articulation problems.
Students with learning disabilities often have difficulties:
Identifying sounds
Segmenting and blending sounds
Auditory discrimination

13. Syntax
Syntax – the patterns or rules people use to put words together into sentences
Kids are faster than kittens.
Kids are not faster than kittens.
The difference in syntax in this sentence is not, but the meaning is completely reversed.

14. Syntax
Students with learning disabilities have difficulty with sentences that have:
Ambiguous meanings
Pronoun references
More complex structures

15. Morphology
Morphology – the intraword rule system that affects the meaning of words
A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language
Students with learning disabilities have significant trouble with morphology, especially morphemes that indicate:
Tense
Possessives
Plurals

16. Phoneme vs. Morpheme
Phoneme- any of a small set of basic units of sound, different for each language,
eg. /t/, /d/, /k/, /a/, /oi/, /th/
Morpheme –minimal grammatical units of a language that cannot be divided into smaller grammatical parts (smallest unit of meaning or lexical unit)
eg. s, ish, ness, ly, ic, ism

17. Semantics
Semantics – the study of the meanings of words and words in groups, particularly sentences
An example of semantics is understanding the meaning of the word speech in these two sentences.
The President’s speech gave the country confidence.
The child’s speech is difficult to understand
Students with learning disabilities often have less- developed vocabularies than their nondisabled peers and often have difficulties with ambiguous words.

18. Pragmatics
Pragmatics – the way in which language is used in social situations
Students with learning disabilities often have difficulties:
Providing descriptive information about objects
Interpreting adult nonverbal cues
Mistakes in how they use language may lead to social problems for these students

19. Metalinguistic Awareness
Metalinguistic awareness – thinking about language, including:
Phonemic awareness
Word awareness
Syntactic awareness
Pragmatic awareness

20. Metalinguistic Awareness
Phonemic awareness – identifying and manipulating larger parts of spoken language, such as words, syllables, onsets and rimes—as well as phonemes.
Example: chip ch ip, cat, c at

21. Problems with Metalinguistical Skills
Students with learning problems in language coding struggle with:
Storing verbal language in memory
Using verbal information in working memory
Retrieving information from long-term memory
Using learning strategies

22. What disabilities are associated with language problems?
Hearing loss/deafness
Intellectual Disability
Autism Spectrum Disorders
Traumatic Brain Injury
Brain Damage from Stroke or Disease
Specific Language Impairment
Learning Disabilities

23. Are Language Problems Common in Learning Disabilities?
Previously the focus was on perceptual processes.
The existing research strongly supports the role of language problems, particularly young children’s skills in phonemic awareness.

24. How Are Spoken Language Abilities Assessed?
Standardized assessments
Comprehensive standardized assessments
IQ tests can be a good measure of verbal ability
Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - III

25. How Are Spoken Language Abilities Assessed?
Informal language assessment methods include language observation, specific language tasks, and language samples.
Teachers can collect and analyze language samples:
Spontaneous
Imitation
Elicited

26. How Can Spoken Language Problems Be Addressed?
General principles and accommodations for teaching language include:
Teach comprehension and production
Adjust pacing, chunk information, and check for understanding to promote comprehension
Increase wait time to promote production
Use self-talk and parallel talk to describe what you and others are doing and thinking
Use modeling to demonstrate language
Use expansion and elaboration

27. Effective Practices for Teaching Spoken-Language Skills
Semantic feature analysis
Draws students’ attention to features and meanings of words that make them unique, thus increasing vocabulary and understanding
Keyword mnemonics
Provide a visual and auditory memory retrieval device for new and unfamiliar vocabulary and concepts

28. Effective Practices for Teaching Spoken-Language Skills
Phonemic Awareness
Statement repetition
Students with learning disabilities do poorly on these tasks
Helps students to improve their strategies for retaining auditory information and for checking their understanding of spoken language

29. Identification of Language Disorders
1. Nonverbal aspects of language are culturally inappropriate.
2. Student does not express basic needs adequately.
3. Student rarely initiates verbal interaction with peers.

30. Identification of Language Disorders
4. When peers initiate interaction, student responds sporadically/inappropriately.
5. Student replaces speech with gestures, communicates nonverbally when talking would be appropriate and expected.
6. Peers give indications that they have difficulty understanding the student.

31. Identification of Language Disorders
7. Student often gives inappropriate responses.
8. Student has difficulty conveying thoughts in an organized, sequential manner that is understandable to listeners.
9. Student shows poor topic maintenance ('skips around').

32. Identification of Language Disorders
10. Student has word-finding difficulties that go beyond second language acquisition patterns.
11. Student fails to provide significant information to the listener, leaving the listener confused.

33. Identification of Language Disorders
12. Student has difficulty with conversational turn- taking skills (may be too passive or may interrupt inappropriately).
13. Student perseverates (remains too long) on a topic even after the topic has changed.
14. Student fails to ask and answer questions appropriately.  

34. Identification of Language Disorders
15. Student needs to hear things repeated, even when they are stated simply and comprehensibly.
16. Student often echoes what she or he hears.

35. Turn & Talk What is something new that you learned about language?
How will this knowledge be applied to your teaching?

36. What is academic language?
Academic language is:
Spoken in the classroom and
workplace
Written into text
Used in formal assessments
Required for academic success
The language of power
Note: To see an extended introduction to academic language, look at chapters 4 and 5 of the Doing What Works’ Digital Workshop about Teaching Reading to English Language Learners.

37. Lisa Delpit Issues of power are enacted in classrooms.
There are codes or rules for participating in power; that is, there is a “culture of power.”
The rules of the culture of power are a reflection og the rules of the culture of those who have power.
If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier.
Those with power are frequently least aware of – or at least willing to acknowledge its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence.
From, Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, p.24

38. How does Language Relate to Race and Culture?
Discuss Lagrander reading
How is language impacted in human development for children with learning disabilities when cultural diversity is a factor? Do these issues affect an individual’s ability to learn?
How can special education professionals enhance language development for individuals with cultural and linguistic differences?

39. For Next Week Choose a research paper topic Initial Reflection Paper
Required Reading:
Hallahan, Chapter 12
King-Sears
Goldstein