Teens with Language Disorders

Navigating the teenage years is hard enough and the pace of life is hectic. When you have a language problem, this is so much more challenging. You don’t quite follow the instructions that a teacher gives, it’s not in the instructions but you’ll give it a go. You don’t quite understand what the author is getting at but you have a good guess. You didn’t quite catch that joke, but you laughed anyway. You tried to explain it but it came out all wrong.

“It is estimated that around 16% of teenagers have a language disorder.”

Language development is a dynamic and lifelong process^[1]. A language disorder means a difficulty understanding or using written and spoken language^[2]. More and more research is showing that some children will struggle to develop appropriate spoken language (oral language) and that this will have long-term effects on learning and achievements^[3].

Teenagers with language disorders have difficulty learning and using spoken language. This means it impacts their ability to complete written and spoken tasks at school including completing assignments, exams and learning new and complex concepts and vocabulary.

Difficulties are also often seen in everyday conversation as difficulty keeping up with the conversation, struggling to understand humour and sarcasm with friends and family.

Teenagers with language disorders often use general phrases “that stuff”, “like, you know” as compensation strategies for difficulty with quickly thinking of the right words or ideas in conversation.^[2]

Adolescent language disorders have been shown to have an impact on teenagers social and emotional well being as well as behavioural problems^[1][4]. Teenagers difficulty with language are often attributed to a lack of interest or attention and ongoing poor academic progress can result in disengaging from the learning experience during secondary school.

Difficulties with language during adolescence has been shown to impact social and emotional well being as well as educational attainment into adulthood^[3][4].

A true language disorder is not due to the effects of intellectual impairment, brain injury or sensory impairment (e.g. hearing loss)^[1].

A language disorder in adolescence may be the result of an earlier identified language disorder. Or, it may be identified at high-school age, exposed by the increased written and spoken demands of high school education^[4] and faster paced social dynamics and engagement.

Teenagers with language disorders are likely to have been diagnosed as children with language disorders. Although in some cases children with good coping strategies may have been able to cope with the language demands placed on them during primary school. However, teenagers language difficulties may be subtle. How they impact spoken and written language can be complex and create barriers to learning for students with language impairments^[2].

Long term difficulty with learning and progress at school has been shown to result in disengagement in learning and impact on teenagers social and emotional well-being. These are known risk factors for social, emotional and behavioural problems^[4].

Based on Starling et al (2011) and Dockrell (2009)^[3] teenagers with language difficulties often show difficulties in some or many of the following skills in both classroom and social environments:

• Difficulty planning, organising and self-monitoring
• Learning new words (vocabulary)
• Difficulty thinking of the right/best words to use
• Using non-specific words e.g. “stuff” “thing” “you know”
• Difficulty with reading comprehension
• Difficulty identifying key points
• Difficulty predicting (what would the consequence be?) and inferring information
• Difficulty with non-literal language such as idioms and metaphors (e.g. light as a feather)
• “Missing the point” in conversations
• Shorter spoken and written sentences
• Spelling and grammatical errors
• Difficulty translating ideas to written text
• Difficulty maintaining friendships

Teenagers with language disorders often initially come to the attention of teachers because of associated behavioural issues^[1].

Difficulties such as hesitating to answer a question or difficulty following a series of complex instruction may often be misinterpreted as lack of interest in learning instead of difficulty with organisation and self-monitoring or the additional processing time needed to think of an answer^[1].

Assessment

During high school, there is increasing focus and expectation placed on written and spoken language as well as language comprehension. But teenagers with language disorders may also have difficulty following along with conversations, keeping up with topic changes and understanding humour, sarcasm and ‘in-jokes’ with their peers. Overall, even subtle language difficulties often cause difficulties in school^[4].

A speech pathology assessment for a teenage will assess spoken and written language using standardised assessments and observations. Assessments will review your teenager’s everyday language skills including their ability to hold and maintain a conversation^[4]. Measuring the functional impacts of their language skills enables us to develop an individualised therapy plan and goals

Therapy

Therapy will focus on understanding an increasing range of higher level language. These are the skills needed for negotiation, ordering, requesting, striking up new conversations. These will help adolescents in wider life-skills. These may include working on interpreting interview questions for example, so they can know what an interviewer is looking for in an answer. This is an example of therapy being more functional at this older age to scaffold a teenager to communication success as they interact with their peers and the community.

Therapy also targets specific skill areas.

1. Vocabulary:
   Teenagers with language difficulties require vocabulary enrichment that has a functional and curriculum specific purpose^[5]. Within a high school classroom teachers regularly introduce specific vocabulary items for each new topic^[3]. Recent evidence has shown that teaching children 10 new words a week could make a significant contribution to language and literacy abilities^[6]. When targeting vocabulary development in teenagers targeting Tier 2 words has been shown to play an important role in vocabulary development. Tier 2 words are words that are found across a variety of topics (e.g. discuss, inhabitants) and are less likely to be taught explicitly to teenagers. Targeting these words and students ability to define, use and relate to other similar words has been shown to improve overall receptive and expressive language abilities across curriculum content^[2].
2. Written expression:
   Creating a written text is a major challenge for teenagers with language disorders. Their writing is typically shorter, poorly organised and contains more errors when compared to other children their age^[3].
   Targeting both form and content of written language we support teenagers to develop strategies targeted towards planning, writing and revision across different text types. Specific strategies to improve written work include think-aloud planning, visual planners (visual organisers, mind maps) and editing^[2].
3. Reading comprehension
   High school students are required to read, analyse and interpret read information on a wide range of topics. Using a strategy based therapy teenagers are encouraged to develop their metacognitive skills (thinking about thinking) and metalinguistic skills (understanding and reflecting about reading)^[2].
   Targeting a number of skills therapy often focuses on summarisation techniques and visual organisation strategies, deleting unnecessary information and thinking of topic sentences. These strategies have been shown to demonstrate significant comprehension improvements for teenagers^[2].
4. Working together
   At Talkshop we aim to work collaboratively with teachers and families to support teenagers with language disorders. Regular home practice is important to ensure the recall and retention of newly learnt skills. However in addition to this working collaboratively has been shown to reduce the negative effects of language difficulties by increasing the opportunities for engagement and achievement^[6]. Working together with classroom teachers gives us the opportunity to specifically tailor therapy goals and language targets to support your teenager’s ability to understand and access the curriculum at school. In their 2011 article Starling, Munro, Togher and Arciuli identified five strategies to support teenagers access to the curriculum:^[2]

1. • Reduced complexity of teacher-created worksheets and assignments
   • Providing direct vocabulary instruction for new curriculum topics
   • Creating a range of visual planners, organisers and language scaffolds
   • Providing assistance in identifying appropriate keywords for internet research tasks
   • Teaching mixed learning style, memory, study and revision strategies

Teenagers with literacy difficulties may benefit from a support through our dedicated literacy services You can read about our Reading Clinic and how we help with literacy concerns