This study examined the efficacy of a social skills training program on the use of validating comments and negative comments by children with specific language impairment. The present study is an extension of a previous research project. Four children (three female, one male) with specific language impairment, ages 6 to 11, participated in a ten week social skills training program which involved direct instruction of target concepts, peer interactions with classmates, and evaluation of the use of target skills by reviewing videotaped peer interactions. The individual performance of each subject was compared to the age- and gender-matched typical peers with whom they interacted during the weekly game sessions of the intervention program. The intervention program was successful in improving the use of validating comments for three of the four subjects (AA, CS, and JH). The subjects' increased use of validating comments, however, did not appear to significantly affect or change the participants' use of negative comments. It was also found that, while individual performance improved, three of the four participants (AA, MD, and CS) consistently produced fewer validating comments than did their typical peers during the weekly game sessions. Follow-up data for the participants indicated that the three participants (AA, CS, and JH) who showed improvement in their use of validating comments over the course of treatment appeared to maintain their increased skill after the treatment ended. Possible explanations for these results are discussed, and recommendations are made for future social skills training programs.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att öka kunskapen kring hur några lärare undervisar elever med språkstörning på låg-, mellan- och högstadiet. Syftet uppnås genom att intervjua lärare och på så sätt få svar på frågeställningarna: Hur anpassar lärarna undervisningen för elever med språkstörning samt vilka utmaningar upplever lärarna att eleverna har? Vilka assisterande verktyg har lärarna tillgång till och använder? I vilken utsträckning anser lärarna att de har kunskaper och tillgång till stöd för att anpassa undervisningen för elever med språkstörning? I undersökningen framkommer att lärarna gör anpassningar i klassrummet för att elever med språkstörning ska kunna nå kunskapsmålen, men att de känner sig osäkra på hur de på bästa sätt skall göra lämpliga anpassningar. De assisterande verktyg som eleverna har tillgång till är bland annat inläsningstjänst och talsyntes. Dessa assisterande verktyg upplevs av lärarna både som framgångsrika men samtidigt som problematiska då de kan innebära praktiska hinder och avleda uppmärksamheten. Trots att språkstörning påverkar både sociala relationer, skolnärvaro och självbild hos dessa elever upplever många lärare att de har bristande kunskap kring diagnosen språkstörning och framgångsrika arbetssätt.

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Studiens syfte var att undersöka framgångsfaktorer för undervisning av elever med språkstörning i ämnet svenska och därför intervjuades fem klasslärare. För att en elev ska få möjlighet att lyckas i klassrummet behöver läraren ha kunskap om språkstörning, språkteori samt hur man utvecklar en läskompetens. Det är även bra att vara förberedd och ligga steget före för att skapa en positiv lärmiljö. Resultatet analyserades med utgångspunkt i det sociokulturella perspektivet och då framkom att ett framgångsrikt lärande ofta sker genom att man får härma, antingen genom att barnet visas en metod via scaffolding eller samspel med andra vuxna eller kamrater. Det är också betydelsefullt att alla elever får vara med i den gemensamma lärandeprocessen och att skolan har en inkluderande undervisning. När eleven sedan ska arbeta på egen hand kan dock uppgifterna vara individanpassade utifrån elevens proximala utvecklingszon. Ett sätt att få denna nödvändiga kunskap, som klasslärare, är genom specialläraren som då kan hjälpa till med reflektioner, men även för att stötta läraren praktiskt i klassrummet på olika sätt. / The aim of this study was to find out how education in the subject of Swedish for pupils with Specific Language Impairment could be successful. Five interviews were therefore conducted with class teachers. The result shows that it's very important that the theacher has knowledge about Specific Language Impairment, linguistics and how children develop basic reading skills. It's also important for the teacher to be prepared and stay ahead to create a positive learning environment. The results were analysed using a sociocultural perspective, which revealed that successful learning was likely to take place in situations where the child is given the chance to imitate; either in interaction with a teacher or classmates, or in situations where the teacher uses scaffolding and shows the pupil how something is done. It's wssential that most classroom activities are common to all, but when the child is to work on her/his own, one can use individualised tasks in the next zone of proximal development. Special education teacher could help the class teachers gain knowledge by using reflection and helping the teacher with insights/methods that could be useful in practice when teaching pupils with Specific Language Impairment.

Research has identified language impairment as a pervasive disability (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987; Greenhalgh & Strong, 2001). Classroom communication behaviors have a role in the maintenance of special education eligibility and functional communication difficulties for young children with language impairment. This paper reviews the theoretical and experimental literature on narrative skills and language impairment as well as empirical support for understanding language delays as part of a group of risk factors that affect child development. The present study describes patterns in the communication skills of a small group of young children with a predetermined diagnosis of language impairment using a case and field mixed methods research design. The study contributes to our conceptual understanding of the pervasive nature of language impairment by focusing on patterns in oral narrative skills and their relationship to communication at school, at home, and in the community. Study results differentiate participants by the severity of utterance formulation difficulties as well as social communication differences and emotional health symptoms to identify patterns. This study was unique in that information from classroom teachers and parents in addition to an analysis of multiple language samples created a thick description of patterns across participants. Discussion elaborates upon patterns in the data and implications for assessment and practice implications for school based services from a speech-language pathologist.

La dysphasie consiste en une atteinte sévère et persistante de l’acquisition et du développement du langage oral. Les élèves qui en sont atteints peinent à devenir des lecteurs habiles et sont à haut risque d’échec scolaire. Si ce trouble très complexe est étudié dans différents domaines (la santé et l’éducation, entre autres), peu d’études se sont spécifiquement intéressées à vérifier si les élèves dysphasiques possèdent des connaissances morphologiques dérivationnelles. Or, depuis un certain nombre d’années, de nombreux chercheurs soutiennent que ces connaissances, qui concernent la forme des mots et leurs règles de formation, peuvent constituer une stratégie supplémentaire aidante pour les élèves aux prises avec un déficit phonologique, comme les élèves dysphasiques. C’est dans ce cadre que se situe la présente étude, dont l’objectif général est d’évaluer les connaissances morphologiques dérivationnelles d’apprentis-lecteurs dysphasiques francophones du primaire. Pour y parvenir, trois tâches morphologiques, soit une tâche de jugement de relation, une tâche de dérivation et une tâche de plausibilité, ont été soumises à trois groupes de participants dont un groupe d’élèves dysphasiques (D=30) et deux groupes contrôles, c’est-à-dire des élèves du même âge chronologique (CA, n=30) et des élèves plus jeunes, mais du même niveau de lecture (CL, n=30). Nos résultats montrent que l’ensemble des trois groupes de participants a tiré profit des unités morphologiques contenues dans les items pour réussir les tâches proposées, les dysphasiques obtenant des résultats inférieurs aux CA mais comparables aux CL. Toutefois, ces résultats ne s’apparentent pas tout à fait au continuum de développement des connaissances morphologiques dérivationnelles établi par Tyler et Nagy (1989). De plus, aucun effet du type d’affixation (items préfixés vs suffixés) n’a été observé. Les résultats obtenus nous permettent de proposer des pistes d’interventions orthodidactiques visant l’enseignement de la morphologie dérivationnelle auprès des élèves aux prises avec des difficultés de lecture, à l’instar des participants dysphasiques qui ont participé à cette étude. / Dysphasia, also known as specific language impairment, is a severe and persistent impairment of acquisition and development of oral language. Students struggling with dysphasia have reading issues and are at high risk of school failure. If this complex disorder is studied in different areas (health and education, among others), few studies have specifically focused on the evaluation of morphological knowledge of dysphasic students. Morphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words and to how small meaningful linguistic units, termed “morphemes”, can be combined to form words. Over the past 30 years, numerous studies have been published on morphological knowledge, showing that awareness of words’ morphological structure can be a very helpful tool for students who are regularly exposed to unfamiliar words and can contribute to reading comprehension, among other skills. From these observations, we conducted a study to investigate morphological knowledge in young French students with dysphasia. To achieve this, three morphological tasks were used among three groups of students including a group of dysphasic students (D=30) and two control groups (students of the same chronological age (CA=30) and younger students of the same reading level (CL=30)). Our results show that all groups of participants took advantage of the units of meaning contained in the words in order to succeed tasks. Results also indicate that D and CL performed similarly on three tasks, but were outperformed by the CA group. For all three groups, results are not following the morphological knowledge continuum suggested by Tyler and Nagy (1989). Moreover, our results show no effect of the type of affixation (prefixed items vs suffixed items). These results have implications for teaching practices, especially when teachers plan specific activities to teach derivational morphology to students struggling with reading difficulties.

This thesis solves deals with special pedagogical problems of primary literacy acquisition of the children with specific language impairment. The aim is to analyze the phenomena, which disrupt the process of acquiring written language forms of the pupils with this diagnosis and to record factors, which help to streamline this process. Another task is to propose the steps to help overcome the problems caused by impaired communication skills by teaching analytic-synthetic method. The theoretical part is the basis for meeting the targets. It describes specific language impairment as one of the categories of impaired communication skills and its consequences for education. Attention is given to the topic of literacy. Emphasis is particularly given on the initial reading literacy. This period is seen in the context of the speech development and the psycholinguistic concept of literacy is introduced, where the skill of phonemic awareness has a central position. At the end of the theoretical part, the methods of teaching of reading are described. The practical part presents the research study, which was carried out in several consecutive phases: initial diagnostic phase, observation of pupils in various stages of teaching of reading, implementation of methodical support measures and the final assessment of the...

Les grammaires de construction postulent l’émergence progressive des structures du langage via l’utilisation de processus cognitifs généraux. Les hypothèses théoriques qui en émanent suggèrent que la complexité et la structure des formes morphosyntaxiques ne peuvent s’expliquer que dans une perspective constructiviste, où l’enfant développe ses nouvelles formes en complexifiant et en généralisant ses propres productions antérieures. Ces hypothèses ont été éprouvées auprès de populations présentant un développement typique du langage (DTL) mais ont peu fait l’objet d’une mise en application auprès d’enfants avec troubles spécifiques du langage (TSL). Or, ces théories offrent de nouvelles perspectives théoriques permettant de mieux appréhender leurs difficultés langagières. Ces enfants présentent un manque de productivité syntaxique ainsi qu’une plus grande dépendance à l’input linguistique, allant dans le sens d’un manque de généralisation des schémas de construction. Nous suggérons que, contrairement aux enfants avec DTL, l’abstraction des schémas de construction des enfants avec TSL serait entravée en raison d’un mécanisme de généralisation qui se mettrait en place plus lentement. Ce travail de thèse a pour objectif de tester cette hypothèse chez les enfants avec TSL, en s’intéressant plus particulièrement au rôle du mapping analogique. Les résultats obtenus sont prometteurs et compatibles avec cette hypothèse. Si l’étude du mapping analogique comme facteur à l’origine des difficultés des enfants avec TSL est particulièrement séduisante, de nombreuses pistes restent à explorer pour appuyer davantage notre hypothèse. / Construction grammars argue that language structures progressively emerge thanks to the use of general cognitive processes. Theoretical hypotheses suggest that complexity and structure of morphosyntactic forms can only be explained in a constructivist perspective in which children develop their new forms by making more complex and generalizing their own prior utterances. These hypotheses have been already tested with children with typical language development (TLD) but few studies were interested in children with specific language impairment (SLI). These hypotheses give new interesting theoretical perspectives for apprehending their language disorders better. Children with SLI present a lack of syntactic productivity and a more important input dependency. These observations are compatible with the hypothesis of a lack of generalization of construction schemas. Consequently, the children’s abstraction of construction schemas would be slowed down compared to children with TLD’s abstraction. The current doctoral thesis studies the hypothesis of a lack of generalization in children with SLI by analyzing more particularly the role of analogical mapping. The results obtained are promising and in agreement with our hypothesis. If studies about the role of analogical mapping as a factor explaining the disorders in children with SLI are attractive, other considerations have still to be explored for strengthening our hypotheses.

Este estudo tem por objetivo investigar o comportamento das crianças com Distúrbio Específico de Linguagem (doravante DEL) em relação à produção de uma estrutura sintática complexa, a interrogativa QU de longa distância (doravante pergunta QULD) no português brasileiro, e compará-lo ao das crianças com Desenvolvimento Típico (doravante DT). Foram coletados dados desses 2 grupos de crianças (DEL e DT) entre 5 e 11 anos de idade. Utilizou-se a metodologia de eliciação, implantada em Thornton (1990), para realizar o experimento. Foram eliciadas 16 perguntas QU LD para cada criança, sendo que 8 dessas perguntas eram com extração de sujeito (4 QU nu e 4 QU+N) e 8 com extração de objeto (4 QU nu e 4 QU+N). Os dados da produção dos 2 grupos foram comparados e observou-se que as crianças de ambos os grupos dominam a estrutura de pergunta-QU LD a partir dos 5 anos. Contudo, a produção de tal estrutura sintática pelo grupo das crianças com DEL (36,65%) mostrou-se menos frequente do que a produção do grupo com DT (89,70%), sugerindo que o grupo com DEL enfrenta dificuldades com as estruturas complexas que envolvem movimento. Considerando-se a produção das crianças com DEL, as perguntas-QU de objeto foram produzidas a taxas semelhantes às perguntas QU de sujeito (QU-que simples de sujeito com movimento-QU (44,44%) e QU simples de objeto (55,55%)) pelo grupo com DEL. A análise dos dados nos sugere que as crianças com DEL, embora apresentem dificuldades relacionadas aos movimentos sintáticos, são capazes de processar ambas as estruturas, diferentemente do que outros estudos com essa população encontrou (por exemplo, Van der Lely e Battell (2003) e Friedmman e Novogrodsky, (2011)). Curiosamente, as crianças não produziram perguntasQU com QU in situ, embora a produção de tal estrutura fosse esperada como uma estratégia de minimização de custo de processamento da informação, algo que foi encontrado em estudos anteriores (como em Corrêa e Augusto (2011)). / The present study investigates the behavior of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) when producing the complex syntactic structure of Long Distance WH- Question and compares it to the production of the same structure by Typically Developing children (TD) at the age of language acquisition in Brazilian Portuguese. Data was taken from 2 groups of children (TD and SLI) aged from 5 to 11 years old. The elicitation method, implemented by Thornton (1990), was used for the experiment. 16 WH-questions were elicited from each child, i.e., 8 with object extraction (4 WH-bare and 4 WHICH+N) and 8 with subject extraction (4 WH-bare and 4 WHICH+N). Data obtained from the 2 groups showed that TD children as well as the SLI group master the complex WH-questions at the age of 5, however, SLI children produced this syntactic structure less frequently (36,65%) than the TD group (89,70%). SLI children certainly faced difficulties in producing it. However, this group of children produced WH-questions with object extraction (55,55%) as frequently as the production of the WH-questions with subject extraction (44,44%). Data analysis suggests that SLI children are able to deal with both syntactic structures (subject and object WH-questions) the same way. SLI children did not produce WH- in situ (a syntactic structure licensed in Brazilian Portuguese).