Children with Language Disorders - Reading and Writing

Children with language disorders may show many different patterns of language skills. Some children have significant difficulties with both listening and speaking skills, some children have stronger listening than speaking skills. Some children may have trouble with vocabulary, grammar, language problem-solving skills and social language. Other children may have more trouble with one or two areas. For children with receptive language impairment, a child is unlikely to recognize a printed version of a word they do not understand when spoken. If a child has poor grammar (word endings and sentence structure) they may not understand written sentences with unfamiliar features, and/or they may not be able to make use of sentence sequence to predict words in a sentence. Even children with stronger receptive language skills, a weakness in word-finding may make it more difficult for a child to retrieve the spoken word while reading the written word. Writing depends heavily on spoken language skills in retrieving vocabulary, generating sentences and using appropriate organizational patterns. Language intervention with children with language disorders should help support their progress in reading/writing skills.