Language Therapy

Types of language treatment for Preschoolers:

Receptive language refers to the ability to “understand.” Such impairments are often characterized by difficulties with following directions, answering questions, turn-taking, and comprehending gestures like shrugging or nodding. For younger children, nurturing these skills involves a variety of fun and interactive play activities with specific targets to promote language stimulation. For older children, language activities incorporate content pulled from their core academic curriculum.

Expressive language difficulties relate to difficulties with speaking. Children may exhibit problems naming objects, asking questions, formulating sentences, using correct pronouns, maintain conversations, or learning songs/rhymes. Additionally, other signs of expressive language delays may include difficulties with naming letters/numbers, looking at pictures in a book and turning pages, telling a sequential story, or learning the alphabet.

** Some children have Mixed language difficulties; this signifies challenges with both receptive and language abilities.

Phonological Awareness is the ability to recall, discern, and manipulate individual sounds at the word, syllable, and sentence level. Onset-rime activities can help develop this skill set. It also is a pre-cursor for reading as children learn to decode the printed word.

Pre-literacy skills develop from the compilation of all of the language rich opportunities that children experience from birth. Fostering these skills is crucial to the development of literacy (reading and writing). Rhyming, singing songs, sequencing daily routines, pointing to and naming signs, reading books, having a child turn the pages, asking story questions, discussing and labeling illustrations, explaining vocabulary words, making connections are just some of the ways these skills are strengthened.

Types of Language Treatment for School-Aged Children:

Language processing skills focus on the development of expressive, receptive or mixed language abilities of the child. Children with language processing difficulties can exhibit challenges with word finding, communicating their thoughts, following directions, misreading social situations, or speaking in nonsensical sentences, etc.

Syntax refers to the rules of sentence structure (within a language) and difficulties in this area involve the inability to apply correct word order in sentences with respect to subject, verb and object. Difficulties with syntax also involve grammatical rules and can negatively impact oral and written modalities.

Semantic skills involves increasing a child’s ability to identify word meanings/definitions, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and homophones. Impaired semantic skills result in difficulties with reading comprehension as well as writing skills.

Word finding difficulties prevent children from easily accessing/retrieving a word that they understand and have used before. Word finding can be targeted with a variety of strategies: visual cues, verbal cues, categorization activities, games that involve synonyms and antonyms, etc.

Literacy Skills are those needed for reading and writing and include skills such as phonemic and print awareness, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and spelling.