Thesis (Ph.D.). / Written for the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/05/12). Includes bibliographical references.

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The diploma thesis deals with speech and language therapeutic issues. It follows children's speech and language development mainly from morphological - syntactic level. It focuses on grammar skills of children at the beginning of school attendance that are evaluated by a newly developed diagnostic material named Test gramatiky pro školní začátečníky, ie Grammar test for school beginners. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with language ontogenesis and development of language levels with a focus on morphological - syntactic level and its diagnostic. It describes grammar issues in detail, its development as well as diagnostic materials used in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. The third chapter presents various diagnosis related to the research where the grammar language level was observed. Particular attention is dedicated to specific language impairment. The empirical part of the thesis represents quantitative research. It evaluates, on a sample of 170 children, practical use of the new test, which is focused on the grammar language level. The research was completed by the method of observation of children and also the feedback and evaluation of the test by clinical speech and language therapists. Through the analysis of acquired data it was found that children with specific language...

Abstract Children with hearing disorders face particular challenges in developing their vocabulary. They often have difficulty in acquiring spoken language at the same rate as their normal hearing peers, despite progress regarding hearing aid technology.Aim. The main aim of this study was to describe aspects of expressive vocabulary for school-age children with mild to moderately severe hearing impairment (HI-group), and to compare with results for a group of normal hearing children (NH-group) of the same age. One aim was also to test whether there were differences, between children with hearing impairment and normal hearing children, in the ability to repeat non-words and sentences and to compare these results within each group with results on two newly constructed vocabulary tests. An additional aim was also to investigate whether background factors, such as age of diagnosis, age of hearing aid fitting and amount of hearing aid use, were related to results on vocabulary tests.Method: 24 children age 7-11 with mild to moderately severe bilateral hearing impairment, and 82 normal hearing children of similar age, were included in this cross-sectional study. Assessments of picture naming, word definition, repetition of nonwords and repetition of sentences were performed with all participants. Age, hearing, use of hearing aid and parents' level of education were included in the analyzes.Results: The HI-group performed significantly below the results of the NH-group regarding picture naming, word definition, nonword repetition and repetition of sentences. The HI-group also produced significantly more words with deficiencies in phonological structure, than the NH-group, during picture naming. In the HI-group there was a significant positive correlation between amount of hearing aid use per day and nonword repetition. Age of diagnose and age of hearing aid fitting did not show statistically significant associations with outcomes on the language tests in this study.Conclusion: Despite the technical development of hearing aids, the expressive vocabulary in school-aged children with bilateral, mild to moderately severe, hearing impairment, does not reach the same level as in normal-hearing peers, although there is a variation within the group. Amount of hearing aid use seems to be important for the ability to perceive new words.