Article Review on “Targeting Complex Sentences in Older School Children with Specific Language Impairment: Results from an Early-Phase Treatment Study”

According to Balthazar and Scott (2018), the children with Special Learning Impairment (SLI) can be clinically measured and cured with the application of right oral language programs. In order to prove this an extensive research was carried out by them on a group of SLI children. To understand the nature of study it is first important to learn about SLI and how does it affect the communication and speech skills of children. First it is to be made clear that children with SLI are no different from the other children as they do not have any negative effect on their other learning abilities such as cognitive. It is specifically termed as impairment and not a disability to differentiate them from the especially abled children.

As the name indicates the children with SLI have the incapacity issues with their speech and communication. The children having it in their pre-school times and kindergarten tend to have it in the progressing grades as well. The problem can be observed easily with the course of the time when it is difficult for a child to read and make words. This leads to the incapacity of the child to make phenomes and rhyming words as specific grammatical errors in their writing. It can be said that this issue can be dealt with in the initial stages as it worsens with the time rolling.

The children finding difficulty to learn grammar and make up words with it are not easy to locate and target. The study is quite new as well and not much of the relevant literature is existing up till now. Hence, it leads to the foundation of this research which is also novel and tried for the first time for the children having disability to use the correct grammar in the sentence formation and speaking. Another thing that has been perceived is that children with SLI are posed to excessive struggle in the complex sentence’s formation and memorization. It is not quite surprising though for the young children to have difficulty in basic sentences formation too. The problem arises when the children from primary and secondary school are unable to learn as well.

At this point, one can identify the signs of SLI in the child and can deal with it at the present time. In the past, only a few cases in this respect have been discussed only such as the group tests carried out on the students with SLI to compare and draw conclusions out of their speaking and writing tests. It is also dependent on the type of the sentence for the children to be called as the SLI suffering or not. In this scenario, the complex sentences help to identify the SLI children the most.

For this purpose, a study was designed to have better understanding of the SLI children by making them come across the complex sentences formation and the grammar hidden in them. For this the major task was the selection of the test sample. The children aged 10-14 were chosen for this research based on several reasons. One being their developmental age and the idea for them to learn everything quickly as compared to the older children. The other being their studies curriculum consisting of the basics making their foundation for the language learning in future. The variables chosen for the research were three each being a part of complex sentence i.e. object complement, adverbial and relevant. All the three categories of sentences were chosen to analyze and investigate which one of them is more feasible for children to learn and which one not.

The research design of the study was experimental, and the children age ranged from 10-14 with prior language disability as told by the parents and teachers. The case documents of each child were obtained from the consent of their parents to make a strong case study. The treatment dosage was designed as per one dosage a week in the form of sessions. The test population was divided into two groups, one consisting of 14 and the other consisting of 16 participants. The scores were assigned for each of the test carried out such as nonverbal intelligence, CELF-4 Core language score.

After a series of performed tests by the recommendations of clinicals and experts, a clear sign of improvement was observed in the SLI children. Hence, concluding that treatment of older children suffering with the same issues can be done. It is recommended for the parents and teachers to take special care of these individuals and try to identify them as soon as possible. There are quite a few prospects available for the future work on the mentioned study.