Speech and/or Language Exceptionality Definition

Language Exceptionality Guidelines

Children up to age 7years 11 months

Children 7 years 11 months or younger who have shown at least a one year delay in language or have a language disorder.

Children and Youth 8 years and older

Children 8 years and older who have shown at least a two year delay or have a language disorder.

Language delays and/or disorders may be identified by a number of different school personnel. The person assessing language should have graduate work in the area and be experienced in the administration and interpretation of the assessment tools being used.

Language Impairment

Language impairment results from the delayed or disordered development of the content, form, or use of spoken language. The content of language refers to what individuals talk about or understand. The form of language refers to the shape and sound of the units of language and their combinations. The use of language refers to the reasons why individuals speak and the ways they construct conversations depending upon what they know about the listener and the context (Bloom, 1988). The student with a language impairment may have difficulty in any or all of these areas. Language impairment can be further broken down into receptive and expressive language impairments. It may be helpful to determine whether the student has a receptive or an expressive impairment or both, prior to examining form, content, and use. Reviewing the information below should help you in the pre-referral process of screening and identification.

What is a receptive language impairment?

A receptive language impairment is the difficulty in listening to and/or understanding language. The difficulty may be in the word level [vocabulary/word knowledge] and/or the sentence level [syntax/morphology] (Harris, 1994). The following characteristics may indicate that the student is having difficulties understanding language. The student may have:

an inadequate attention span, particularly during oral presentations.
poor listening skills
difficulty following directions
poor memory for information presented verbally
difficulty retaining concepts from one day to the next
limited receptive vocabulary
difficulty understanding words with multiple meanings
difficulty categorizing related words or concepts
difficulty understanding figurative language
difficulty with concepts of space, time, and quantity

Impairment in Language Form

Does the student comprehend simple sentences? i.e. Can the student point to pictures or perform an action from a spoken target sentence? Eg. Do they understand cat vs. cats?

Impairment in Language Content

Does the student understand vocabulary used in the grade level curriculum? e.g. If the theme is "The Sea", do they comprehend words in this category?

Can the child point to a picture or perform an action based on a given target to display comprehension. e.g. point to the picture that shows "What's in the water?"

Impairment in Language Use

Does the student comprehend social language and react age appropriately?

Does the student use appropriate eye contact?
Does the student use turn taking appropriately?
Does the student display comprehension of social greetings?

What is an expressive language impairment?

An expressive language impairment is difficulty with the production of language that adequately represents the student's intended message and may include problems with word retrieval, word use, sentence formulation, and/or conversational skills (Harris, 1994). The following characteristics may indicate that a student is having difficulties producing language.

The student:

speaks in words, phrases, incomplete, or inaccurate sentences
relies upon gesture to supplement or substitute for oral language; uses pronouns, plurals, and possessives incorrectly
has difficulty with the agreement of subjects and verbs
has difficulty telling a story or describing an event or procedure in a logical sequence
uses run-on sentences
has limited expressive vocabulary
has difficulty finding the appropriate word(s) to express meaning
overuses filler words such as "ah" or "um"
avoids speaking in class
has difficulty interacting with peers or adults

Impairment in Language Form

English grammatical morphemes develop in a more or less predictable sequence. There are no specific ages at which these develop, just an order for normal development. Present progressive (e.g. -ing) usually develops first and third person irregular (e.g. does, goes) is one of the last to develop. The reason for this sequence of development lies in the linguistic complexity of the morpheme. An impairment in language form may show a child developing these morphemes in an unusual order or an inability to use grammatical morphemes appropriately.

Impairment in Language Content

Children who have expressive language disorders or delays in language content often give grammatically correct responses that do not make sense. They correctly use all the grammatical morphemes but give inappropriate responses (Lahey, 1988).

These children are sometimes described as hyperverbal. They have appropriate articulation, intonation and stress patterns but are weak in content. (Lahey, 1988).They may be the hardest in whom to identify the specific problem as they sound like others around them except they lack appropriate content in their communication.

Impairment in Language Use

Students who have expressive language use delays/disorders have learned how to use language to code ideas but have not learned to use it to communicate. (Lahey, 1988).

Ask yourself whether the student:

responds appropriately to social greetings?
maintains the topic of conversation?
initiates conversation with his/her peers?
uses non-verbal communication appropriately?

Speech Exceptionality

Speech Sound Disorders: These problems involve both articulatory disorders and phonological disorders.

Fluency Disorders: These are characterized by repetitions, prolongations, or blocks that interrupt the flow of speech, or any abnormal disruptions in the normal rhythmic flow of speech that are noticeable and not controlled by the child.

Voice Disorders: Deviations in pitch, pitch patterns, range of pitch, vocal quality, loudness, or loudness patterns constitute voice disorders.

Speech Exceptionality Guidelines

Speech sound disorders, fluency disorders and voice disorders will be determined by the school speech language pathologist. Difficulties in these areas may range from mild to severe. All these children will not qualify for service from the speech-language pathologist. Within service delivery there will be different models of service for each child. Guidelines for service delivery of speech-language pathology are currently being developed.

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