Syntactical Language Assessment

Improved Essays
Informal assessment of N~’s syntactic usage revealed syntactical difficulties. He predominately produced simple sentence during conversation (e.g. “my ear hurts”). N~’s syntax was negatively impacted by language formulation difficulties as his sentences deteriorated into fragments and short phrases that were linked with the connective “and”. He exhibited errors in subject-verb agreement during discourse (e.g. “I no feel good”) and in formalized testing (e.g., “pencil is do your homework”). According to Hoff (2005), by the time children are 4 years old, they typically produce complex sentences and essentially master the grammar of their language.

Informal assessment of structural knowledge indicated depressed language form for social communication purposes. At times, he would speak in simple sentences and fragments, especially when he was required to engage in extended language production. These characteristics may impact his academic achievement, specifically in production and formulation of narratives and responses to verbal instructions and questions. In order to improve his ability to comprehend complex syntactic forms, intervention is warranted. Conversational and Pragmatics N~ exhibited poor use of flexible eye gaze, as he occasionally met the examiner’s eye gaze throughout the evaluation.
…show more content…
He required numerous verbal prompted and reinforcement to provide information upon request and demonstrated limited social reciprocity. In terms of pragmatics development, N~ conveyed limited speech acts that included discourse, comment, protest, routine, and report (Gerber, 1987). During conversational exchange, N~ mainly responded to the examiner’s questions and required verbal prompts to elaborate on his answers. According to Gerber (1987), a child of N~’s age is expected to use language to code for the following functions: regulate-obtain information, regulate-obtain participation/invite, discourse- feedback, discourse-repair, or discourse-initiate a topic or turn take. He exhibited depressed maintenance of conversational exchanges and frequently stated that he wanted to go home. In addition, when he stated “I am angry” and “I got nervous” he was asked follow-up questions (e.g., what does angry mean) and did not demonstrate an understanding of his feelings. Overall, N~ demonstrated depressed skills for conversation, as indicated by poor use of flexible eye gaze. In addition, he experienced difficulty using language to code for various functions. Fluency N~’s fluency was informally assessed through a recorded conversational speech sample. Analysis of the conversational samples revealed that N~ demonstrates various types of disfluencies including prolongations, sound repetitions, and blocks. N~’s disfluencies were not accompanied by any secondary behaviors. According to Ms. R~ N~ was aware of his disfluencies and he stamps his feet or stops talking; however, these behaviors were not observed today. The Stuttering Severity Instrument-Fourth Edition (SSI-4) was administered to formally assess N~’s fluency. The SSI-4 is a norm-referenced assessment, that analyzes a child or adult’s stuttering severity. The SSI-4 assesses four speech behaviors of the examinee’s speech, (i.e., frequency, duration, physical concomitants, and naturalness of the examinee’s speech). Two 140-syllable speech samples were obtained to determine the frequency of disfluencies. Percent Syllables Stuttered (PSS) was calculated by dividing the number of disfluencies by the total number of syllables. PSS during a picture description activity was calculated to be 16 % and during conversation to be 14 %. N~’s frequency task score was 16. Duration score was calculated by averaging the duration, in seconds, of N~’s three longest stuttering events. N~ received a duration task score of 6, as his average duration of stuttering events was approximately 1.0-1.9 seconds. The

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    L. R's GFTA-3 Summary

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Informal assessment revealed L.R.’s language comprehension to be adequate for social communication purposes. His lexical diversity, syntactic knowledge and use were judged to be age-appropriate. The Stuttering Severity Instrument-4 (SSI-4) was administered to formally assess L.R.’s fluency. L.R. received a total overall score of 29, which places him in the 78th – 88th percentile, and indicates a severe fluency disorder.…

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    As newborns, people are born without the ability to articulate thoughts. Being submerged in an environment where people constantly speak, allows children to learn how to speak by repeating what is heard. Initially, young children begin speaking a handful of words. Then, as children continue to listen to the way others engage in conversation, they begin to form sentences and complete thoughts. As children continue to develop conversational skills, they learn how to communicate their thoughts and their speech begins to follow an organized flow.…

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As explained by Phillip Allen in his peer-reviewed article, The Influence of Texting Language on Grammar and Executive Functions in Primary School Children, he explains that “Nearly all studies on the effects of textese focused on children’s literacy development and hardly any attention has been paid to the effects of textese on children’s language development. Specifically grammatical development is interesting in this respect because, as mentioned by Kemp and colleagues, grammar rules of conventional written language are often transgressed in textese. ”(Phillip Allen). So maybe our fault is not the fact that texting influences young kids in the growing stages of their brain, but the sense that the way we teach the kids as they are developing may not be the best and that with the influence of phones, and how much we rely on them in this day and age can truly affect how young kids develop as an adult. It may be possible if they see that their older respected elders are relying and using these devices, they will want to as well.…

    • 1151 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Some talk with their youngsters and participate in primarily dialogue; some primarily talk at their children. Some mainly support the actions of their offspring, and if not, provide reasons why not; others primarily control the actions of their children, and do not explain why…” Clearly, language shapes the mind at even an early age. The author shared his positive and incredible experience about a girl, Charlotte, who was born deaf. He first read how Charlotte’s parents were angry, scared, and lost when they learned their infant was could not hear.…

    • 977 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Video #1 The first video is of an 8 year old boy, AA. Though this video does not provide background on AA’s speech and language history in order to make any concrete judgment, we may observe for potential therapy. This video also does not give a long enough language sample to fully conclude any assessment, although it gives the opportunity to begin comprehension of AA’s language abilities.…

    • 1777 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    would get tongue tied. There was one instance in particular that I remember when he had to speak with an insurance company about an accident. Someone had hit him from the rear and he had to describe in detail what happened. I could feel his anxiety as soon as he started to speak to the agent over the phone. My mother was making comments in the background about how he should have written down exactly what he was going to say because he seemed so flustered and tongue tied.…

    • 1668 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    C~, a 15-year-old male, was referred for a speech and language evaluation at the Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center (CERC) on March XX, 2016 for diagnostic clarification and to determine if speech-language therapy is required in school. He was accompanied to the evaluation by his mother, Ms. Cr~; however, due to late arrival a parent interview was not conducted. All pertinent information was obtained from C~ and his chart. C~ is currently in 9th grade at XXXXX Charter school. C~ stated that he attended a dual language school for 3 years (i.e., 2nd, 3rd, 4th grade), in which he learned English and Spanish.…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Developmental Milestones

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Nonetheless, their language is still developing at this stage. Children also begin to take part in conversations with adults and show that they can now understand meaningful conversations. They are also now aware of things such as colour, position, shape and size. Now that children's vocabulary has broadened, they begin to engage in make believe play, things like houses, shops and cafés, which will allow them to use their language to play in games like this. By asking questions or calling people by their names children are now using their language in different ways and they will now react to other people's facial expressions and…

    • 1171 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Famous development psychologist, Noam Chomsky argues children are not taught grammar but acquire it through socialization—we are preprogrammed to develop language skills, especially during early childhood. Children learn through a hypothesized mental structure called the Language Acquisition Device, which includes basic grammar. Even though she had scientists teaching her English and seemed to be making progress for some time, she was capable of very little learning and ultimately resulted in a substantial deficiency in anything more complicated than basic grammar. Genie constantly used over-regularizations, such as “There are two sheeps” and…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1. In the situation where the child had to use four- and five-word sentences within a few minutes of observing her because she had a very complex language development. Maci was at her softball game and came out after she had fallen on her arm. That is why she said the sentence, “I hurt my arm.” Her mom responded with that she will be okay and then proceeded to kiss her arm.…

    • 426 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Lucy's Anomia

    • 103 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Lucy exhibited both strengths and weaknesses in expressive language. Lucy’s strengths consisted of providing appropriate responses during social greetings, syntactically and grammatically correct sentence formations, and suitable responses to personal questions. Difficulties were exhibited with using precise wording when describing scenarios. Lucy typically utilized interjections (e.g., um, yeah), vague words (e.g., that), and circumlocutions (i.e., she attempts to describe a word that she is having difficulty retrieving). Lucy exhibited anomia where she seemed to know what she wanted to say but was unable to produce the word or words; Lucy’s anomia was decreased when provided with verbal semantic cues presented by the clinician.…

    • 103 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Childhood Milestones

    • 193 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Milestones Children from age’s 3-5 words become longer and difficult by start adding more details to their words. Their vocabulary continues to grow. Children start to develop discourses skills like participating in a conversation during the preschool. Achievements in language form Children’s syntax in this age is almost like adults. They simplify their words and this simplification called phonological.…

    • 193 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Child Language Development

    • 1369 Words
    • 6 Pages

    For instance, conversations, sociodramatic play, games, and news-telling are examples of a range of experiences that allow the development of a child to use language for different…

    • 1369 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The ways in which one speaks to a child does in turn effect the way in which the child develops their language skills. In her article An analysis of child caregivers’ language during book sharing with toddler-age children, Paula Rhyner quotes Katherine Nelson by stating that “It has been suggested that adult language that is slightly more complex than…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Baby Talk Essay

    • 1891 Words
    • 8 Pages

    How baby talk can help? As mentioned above, baby talk is characterized by slower and more repetitive tone than used in regular conversation and the speech is more likely in shorter, simpler utterances. Do infants pay greater attention to speech with such characteristics? The answer appears to be yes: They show a clear preference for it, from an early age, over adult-directed speech (e.g., Fernald 1985; Panneton Cooper & Aslin 1990; Werker, Pegg, & McLeod 1994; see also Zangl & Mills 2007).…

    • 1891 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays