Children with special educational support needs in the language area
What language impairments are there?
The children show impairments in language acquisition (in pronunciation, in vocabulary, in sentence structure), in vocal and/or fluency, in auditory processing/perception and/or in communication. Often there is also a pronounced awareness of the disorder. This is often reflected in the following behaviors:
The child
feels ashamed, withdraws, does not want to repeat the corrected sentence, becomes aggressive, cannot help himself with words and acts physically, suffers, feels that he is speaking differently from the other children, sadness and helplessness set in.
The language impairments can be very different and also interconnected:
Pronunciation (phonetic-phonological language level)
Some sounds are replaced, misshapen or confused with other sounds (“tan is nit” instead of “can’t”; “detommen” instead of “come”; “babier” instead of “paper”, “nane” instead of “banana”)
Vocabulary (semantic-lexical language level)
The memory and retention of words or the use of words is restricted. The child often responds with "don't know".
Paraphrases are often used ("Such a thing and you can throw things in there, like sheets of paper and such other paper"à mailbox).
Grammar (morphological-syntactic language level)
The rules of sentence construction have not yet been discovered (regularly answers in one or two word utterances).
Incorrect subject-verb congruence: e.g. "You go" or "You go" instead of "You go".
No secondary verb: e.g. "I see the hare." Instead of "I see the hare."
No or incomplete subordinate clauses, e.g. "Mama come home hungry" instead, "Mama comes home because she is hungry".
No verb ending in the subordinate clause: eg "(...), because the scooter is broken, instead of "(…....), because the scooter is broken".
Communication- Pragmatics (communicative-pragmatic language level)
Linguistic hints
Problems with narrative contributions (turn-taking, erraticness - jumping back and forth between different topics/sentences, inappropriate urge to talk, fixed (always the same) statements)
Language comprehension problems, difficulties in understanding the speeches of others (What does my conversation partner want from me? / What should I do?)
Non-linguistic symptoms
Lack of eye contact
Lack of communication (very shy / reserved in conversational situations)
Lack of communication feeling interpretation
Difficulties in the (appropriate) use of facial expressions and gestures
Negative social integration (no friends/outsiders, behavioral problems) possibly negative self-esteem
Auditory processing-perceptual disorders
It is difficult to differentiate between noise and useful noise (disturbing noises cannot be “faded out” / What is really important?)
Missing storage of content/words (difficulty remembering)
Easily distracted (difficulty concentrating on language requirements)
language comprehension
Statements or small stories are not fully understood.
Instructions are not implemented in the expected way.
Lack of attention to spoken language (verbal language).
Multilingualism - language disorders in children growing up multilingual
Despite language support, the development of the language is impaired in both the first (mother tongue) and the second language (German) and is progressing too slowly / not appropriate to the age.