Language Development Essay The purpose of this essay is to summarize four articles on typical and atypical language development, and reflect upon how the author will use the information as a teacher.
Article 1 Summary & Reflection
Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder with multiple genetic and environmental risk factors (Nation, 2008). Diagnosis of SLI applies “when speech and language skills fall below nonverbal intelligence for no obvious reason” (Nation, 2008, p. 266). Research into causes, effective assessments, and interventions is difficult and ongoing by nature of the fact there are no obvious causes, and the multitude of ways it can manifest. It may be more accurate to call SLI a catch-all term for a spectrum of language difficulties which are not yet fully understood, rather than a specific, easily defined disorder.
The only way the author can see to use the information presented in Nation’s article is to be mindful that language difficulties are potentially indicative of a bewildering number of possible problems. The fact that experts still do not understand it leads the author to conclude that the school speech-language pathologist may be an invaluable resource.
Article 2 Summary & Reflection
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8). They conducted three studies; two testing “the brain’s sensitivity to slow rhythmic syllable-length information” and one testing children’s ability to distinguish individual words from spoken foreign languages using statistical information (Kovelman et al, 2015,