Language Development Essay

Language Development

Please make sure you have completed this unit's readings before coming to Seminar, especially the article, "The Language Use Inventory for Young Children: A Parent-Report Measure of Pragmatic Language Development for 18-47-month-old children" by O'Neil. Be prepared to answer the following questions:

Notes from O'Neil Article (O'Neil, 2007):

Researchers studying young children's pragmatic development have focused on a wide range of topics and ages. Longitudinal studies that have concentrated on children's earliest gestural and verbal communicative intents have demonstrated that children begin as early as 9 to 10 months of age to use their gestures and vocalizations for such pragmatic functions as requesting, labeling, answering, greeting, and protesting

No standardized test (observational or stand-alone parent report) is currently available that is specifically designed to assess toddlers' and preschool children's (i.e., under age 4 years) pragmatic language competence.

How does screening link to follow up assessments?

The LUImay also provide a measure to equate children for overall pragmatic language development when investigating environmental or cognitive correlates of language use such as theory of mind reasoning or social competence (O'Neil, 2007). However, a child's language ability can develop variably and quickly during this development period. Therefore, follow up assessments to monitor progress are an essential part of the equation. Even if a child shows some language difficulties during development, they can later progress rapidly as each child develops on different time frames.

Explain the steps that you would take to prepare and hold a meeting with a parent to discuss the results of a recent assessment.

With respect to assessing language competence in younger children, and especially pragmatic competence, structured tests have been criticized as providing only a limited picture of the richness and complexity of the child's communicative behavior and revealing little about the child's language as it occurs and is used in everyday communication (O'Neil, 2007).Therefore, it is important to put any results communicated with parents in context and not to give them a false idea that there is some problem when there may not be.

Why would you not want to use subjective statements in the documents you share with your parents? Please give examples of objective statements that can describe a child's language use.

Sharing subject statements can mislead parents into thinking there is a problem with their child when there may not be any cause for major concern. Using objective statements as opposed to subjective ones can facilitate more accurate communication between parties. A few examples that can be objective from the LUI could be:

A: How your child uses gestures to ask for something the child's imperative use of gestures. e.g., lifts arms to be carried; points to something wanted

B: How your child uses gestures to get you to notice something the child's declarative use of gestures. e.g., points to something of interest; shows you something of interest

Using such objective measures can add more clarity to a situation that a subjective judgment of a child's language development.

UNIT 8 SEMINAR

In this Seminar, you will discuss communicative disorders and the specific characteristics found in autism, cleft palate, hearing loss, stuttering, and tongue tie. Please be prepared to use the chart on page 376 of your text for links to the field trips that you will take together as a class. You will discuss your role as an early childhood professional in meeting the needs of children with communicative disorders.

Autism and Communicative disorders

Cleft lip and Cleft Palate and Communicative disorders

Hearing Loss and Communicative disorders

Stuttering and Communicative disorders

Tongue tie and Communicative disorders

Also, be prepared to discuss the following:

Describe the behavior of a child….....