The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) defines a language disorder as an impairment in comprehension and/or use of a spoken, written, and/or other symbol system. The disorder may involve the form of language (grammar), the content of language (meaning) and/or the function of language in communication (pragmatics), in any combination.

But what does that really mean?

There are three main areas of language: expressive language, receptive language and pragmatic language.

• Expressive language refers to what a child says.
• Receptive language refers to the language a child understands.
• Pragmatic language refers to the social use of language, or how a child uses language to relate to others and “function” in our world.

A child may exhibit an impairment in one, two or all three areas of language in any combination.

What does a Language Disorder look like?

A child with an expressive language disorder may demonstrate:

• Limited expressive vocabulary
• Shorter utterance/sentence length
• Decreased variety of words used
  • Nouns, verbs, adverbs, pronouns
• Grammatical errors
  • Difficulty with plurals, pronouns (using he for she, they, him or her), past tense verbs, deleting articles (the or a)
• Difficulty with sentence structure
  • Produces sentences with words that are out of order
• Difficulty structuring and retelling stories (in both written and oral form)

A child with a receptive language disorder may demonstrate difficulty with:

• Understanding basic age-appropriate concepts
  • Big/little, dirty/clean, more/less, same/different, longer/longest
• Following verbal commands
  • One-step for children ages 1-3 (sit down, get the ___, give me ____)
  • Multiple- step for children ages 4-8 (get your journal and write your name at the top)
• Identifying categories
• Answering yes/no questions
• Asking and answering wh-questions
  • What, who, when, where, why
• Answering questions about a story

A child with a pragmatic language disorder may demonstrate difficulty with:

• Greetings
• Using appropriate eye contact
• Using language for a variety of functions
  • Commenting, making requests, asking questions, demanding, informing
• Understanding non-verbal cues given by others
  • Facial expressions
  • Body language
• Turn-taking in play and in conversation
• Maintaining a topic in conversation
• Engaging in interactive play with peers
• Initiating interactions and communication with adults and peers
  
  

A child with a pragmatic language disorder may frequently:

• Use repetitive phrases
• Use memorized phrases or utterances inappropriately
• Demonstrate echolalia (inappropriately repeating another person’s words/sounds or simply parroting a persons words with no communicative meaning)
• Display limited interests or hyper focus on a preferred topic
• Display limited play skills
  • Play with a limited number of toys
  • Play with toys in the same manner each time
  • Become upset when a play scheme is altered
    
    

Are a language disorder and speech disorder the same?

While both are considered to fall under the umbrella of a communication disorder, a language disorder is different from a speech disorder. A language disorder is an impairment of our understanding and use of language. A speech disorder is an impairment in our ability to physically produce language. Difficulty producing specific sounds, articulation disorders and stuttering are examples of speech disorders.

Helpful Websites:

www.parishschool.org

www.asha.org

www.txsha.org