A Functionalist Approach to Language and Its Implications for Assessment and Intervention

Bates, Elizabeth; Thal, Donna; MacWhinney, Brian

doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-7156-2_5

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…When children with SLI are identified, they typically are able to produce and/or comprehend some language, suggesting that these children do possess language-learning resources that enable them to learn from the ambient environment. More important, these observations suggest that a basic goal of intervention should be to stimulate the child's existing resources and/or trigger changes in the child's grammatical system so that the child can learn more efficiently and rapidly from the ambient environment (Bates, Thal, & MacWhinney, 1991;Cleave & Fey, 1997;Rice, Wexler, & Cleave, 1995). In other words, rather than using methods that help the child to learn specific language targets within intervention sessions in response to clinically delivered stimuli, clinicians should seek methods that will help children learn language more effectively both inside and outside the intervention context.…”

Section: Principle 3 Select Intermediate Goals In An Effort To Stimumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Principle 4. The specific goals of grammatical intervention must be based on the child's "functional readiness" and need for the targeted forms (Bates et al, 1991;Johnston, 1985).…”

Section: Principle 3 Select Intermediate Goals In An Effort To Stimumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasing the frequency and perceptual salience of target syntactic and morphologic forms in input probably is not sufficient to facilitate grammatical learning and use for many children with SLI. In addition, steps must be taken to clarify the relationship between the target forms and their semantic/pragmatic/grammatical function (Bates et al, 1991;Bunce & Watkins, 1995;Johnston, 1985). This can be done effectively by contrasting the child's current, less mature production (e.g., sentences with grammatical morphemes omitted) with a more mature adult alternative.…”

Section: Childmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ten Principles of Grammar Facilitation for Children With Specific Language Impairments

Fey

Long

Finestack

2003

Am J Speech Lang Pathol

134

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Although they often have significant difficulties in other areas, most children with specific language impairment (SLI) have special difficulties with the understanding and use of grammar. Therefore, most of these children will require an intervention program that targets comprehension or production of grammatical form. Language interventionists are faced with the difficult task of developing comprehensive intervention programs that address the children's grammatical deficits while remaining sensitive to their other existing and predictable social, behavioral, and academic problems. The purpose of this article is to present and justify 10 principles that we regard as essential for planning adequate interventions for children with language-learning problems. These principles are relevant for all children with problems in the use of grammar, but they are especially appropriate for 3- to 8-year-old children with SLI. Although all of our examples are from English, the principles we have chosen are sufficiently broad to cut across many linguistic and cultural boundaries.

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Section: Principle 3 Select Intermediate Goals In An Effort To Stimumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Principle 4. The specific goals of grammatical intervention must be based on the child's "functional readiness" and need for the targeted forms (Bates et al, 1991;Johnston, 1985).…”

Section: Principle 3 Select Intermediate Goals In An Effort To Stimumentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Childmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Ten Principles of Grammar Facilitation for Children With Specific Language Impairments

Fey

Long

Finestack

2003

Am J Speech Lang Pathol

134

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“…Nonmodular, or 'interactional', views of pragmatic impairment have been influenced by connectionist and functional models of linguistic and cognitive processing (e.g. Bates, Thal, & MacWhinney, 1991), by a growing awareness of the role played in pragmatics by cognitive capacities such as inference, theory of mind and executive function (Martin & McDonald, 2003), and by approaches such as Conversation Analysis (e.g. Damico, Oelschlaeger, & Simmons-Mackie, 1999) which focus on those features of pragmatics which can only be accounted for in terms of interpersonal, collaborative activity.…”

Section: Michael R Perkinsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clinical pragmatics: An emergentist perspective

Perkins

2005

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

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“…From this perspective there is little evidence for pragmatic impairment in children with SLI (Craig 1995: 627). In a functionalist approach, on the other hand, as suggested by Bates et al (1991), the relationship between form and function, or form-function mappings, are essential. As yet no research has been done on children with SLI within this framework.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextual Influence On The Language Production Of Children With Speech/Language Impairment

Hansson

Nettelbladt

Nilholm

2000

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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To investigate the possible contextual variability of language and interaction, data from 10 children with speech/language impairment and three different types of conversational partners (a parent, a peer and a clinician) were collected. The dialogues were analyzed with respect to the characteristics of the dialogues as whole, to the dominance and the productivity of the three types of conversational partners, and to the productivity, fluency and grammatical structure of the language production of the children with speech/language impairment. Productivity was measured as mean length of utterance (MLU) in words, number of utterances, number of different words and proportion of complete and intelligible utterances. Fluency was measured as the proportion of utterances containing a maze. Grammatical structure was analysed with respect to the use of grammatical morphemes, word order patterns, the occurrence of expansions and the complexity of verb forms. Significant differences, in particular between child-child and adult-child dialogues were found. The adult-child dialogues were asymmetrical, where the adults dominated through asking many questions and talking much. The peer dialogues were more dynamic and equal. In these dialogues the children with speech/language impairment took a more active role as a conversational partner. The children produced more utterances and different words with the adult partners, but variables related to fluency and grammatical structure did not vary as a function of the conversational partner. The results imply that children with speech/language impairment practise different aspects of their communicative ability with different types of conversational partners. In particular, it is important to provide them with opportunities to interact with peers, in order for them to develop their skills as independent conversational partners.

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A Functionalist Approach to Language and Its Implications for Assessment and Intervention

Cited by 14 publications

References 28 publications

Ten Principles of Grammar Facilitation for Children With Specific Language Impairments

Ten Principles of Grammar Facilitation for Children With Specific Language Impairments

Clinical pragmatics: An emergentist perspective

Contextual Influence On The Language Production Of Children With Speech/Language Impairment

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