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Banter Speech & Language | Sydney speech pathologists helping child and adult clients, and other speech pathologists.

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Friends are the key: Parents play an important role in helping children with Developmental Language Disorder to fit in | Banter Speech & Language

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I don’t say much in public about my experience as a parent of a teenager with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), but this research really hit home. Parents need our support as they do the hard work of helping their children to make friends and to be included in everyday activities. Thanks, as always, to the

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Here you will find the 2023 #DLDday materials plus resources from previous campaigns.

2023 DLD Around the World RESOURCES
2023 DLD Around the world Memes - social media 2023 DLD Around the world e-signature 2023 DLD Around the world Social Media frame
GET YOUR BAKE ON FOR #DLDDAY

Get your Bake on for #DLDday 2023! We've created all of the resources you'll need to hold a fantastic fundraiser for RADLD. We can't wait to see your photos!
Baked goods donation form BAKE SALE POSTER TEMPLATE dld facts Snack/baked goods labels
MEDIA RELEASE
2023 press release light up event 2023 press release save the date 2023 press release Personal story 2023 press release organisation
RESOURCES

DLD FACT SHEETS
dld facts (fOR sOCIAL mEDIA)
POSTERS
DLD AWARENESS A4 POSTERS
LOGOS

SOCIAL MEDIA / Zoom

Colour-In Sheets
Colour-In sheet | growing with dld
Printable Stickers

NB: You need Avery code L7160 address labels or compatible to print the stickers: 7×3 stickers on each sheet, size 3.81cm x 6.35cm.

Other RADLD Resources
DLD Population Calculator RADLD School Presentation
PREVIOUS #DLDDAY CAMPAIGN RESOURCES
growing with dld Strategies Flyer Think Language, think dld MEMES
social media

Did you know that 84% of people with access to the internet use social media? This is why it's so important we make the most of this free and easy to use platform to raise awareness. We want to spread the word and tell as many people as possible about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

Below, we tell you about some of the ways to get involved on social media to support the campaign!

What social media platforms can I use?

GET INVOLVED

Share our posts and create your own in the lead up to DLD Awareness Day.

Share the #DLDday campaign videos on social media when it is released.

Make sure you use our campaign hashtags #DLDday on all posts.

Use #DevLangDis all year around to discuss DLD

Add @someone to your posts to target an organisation, individual or celebrity that you think needs to know about DLD or DLD Awareness

Update your social media profile with our #DLDday frame

Share the RADLD films!

Media RELEASE

Use our media release templates to submit a story to your local newspaper or magazine. Enter your name or organisation and add your own quotes, photos of your event or views of children/parents/professionals. For any media release inquiries, please contact hello@radld.org.

DLD Awareness Day Activities

Speak at community events. Is there a community meeting you can attend and talk about DLD? Go for it!

Hold a stand. School foyers, train stations, lunch rooms at work. Wherever there is a crowd, a stand would be great.

Hand out resource packs to community services. Services supporting the community who are likely to encounter people with DLD (so every service) would benefit from you stopping by and dropping off some resources. Why not challenge them to support DLD Awareness Day by wearing purple and yellow on the day.

Put up posters. We've got a heap of FREE posters online. Download them and put them up everywhere.

Change your email signature or screensaver. It is a simple but effective way to spread the word to people you know.

Make t-shirts. The RADLD logo is freely available on our website, so why not download it and get creative with your clothing!

Host a lunch and learn session. Get your colleagues together and talk to them about DLD. You can show them one of our Youtube movies.

Put RADLD stickers on everyone and tell them why the need to know and support DLD!

Make and hide #DevLangDis rocks for the public to find. How cool is this idea?! One of our Ambassadors came up with this great way to make the general public more DLD aware. Simply decorate the rocks and hide them all over the community. You could even add an ask for them to share their find online with their networks.

Organise a light up event for a local landmark.

Disclaimer: All material at www.RADLD.org has been created or collated for the express purpose of partnering with the community to foster a substantial increase in international awareness of Developmental Language Disorder. RADLD and the International Committee accept no responsibility for the alteration or misuse of these materials by other parties once downloaded from www.RADLD.org. RADLD and the International Committee reserves the right to protect materials from alteration and misuse, including the RADLD logo.

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Here you will find the 2023 #DLDday materials plus resources from previous campaigns. 2023 DLD Around the World RESOURCES 2023 DLD Around the world poster 2023 DLD TRANSLATIONS poster 2023 DLD Around the world Memes - social media 2023 DLD Around the world e-signature 2023 DLD Around the world...

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Frankie's Story: A lived experience of DLD

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Frankie's Story: A lived experience of DLD

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Frankie's story: A lived experience of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

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Link to DLD Day 2025 Poster

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“I just wanted to express my sincere gratitude to you & the wonderful team at Afasic, you are doing an amazing job on behalf of people with communication difficulties. You are all FABULOUS.”

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Afasic supports and provides information for families with children and young adults who have Speech Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) with a focus on Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

www.afasic.org.uk

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The Afasic Helpline – A Lifeline for Parents

Are you worried that your child is not talking or not saying as much as other children of their age? Do you need to speak to someone who understands and can help? Then please contact the Afasic Helpline today.

We are the only helpline that knows enough about SLCN to help you understand your child’s difficulties, what help (s)he needs and how to get it.

We also offer a ‘listening ear’ if you just want to talk to someone who understands. No query is too small or too silly. If you are worried or even just want to check there’s nothing else you need to know or do, please get in touch. Read about what we can help with.

Call Us

0300 666 9410

Ring the Afasic Parents’ Helpline on 0300 666 9410 during opening hours – Monday & Wednesday: 10.30am to 4.00pm.

Email

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DLD Together: Online Course for Parents

This online course usually runs one evening per week for 7 weeks. It is for parents/carers of children diagnosed with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

For more information please see the link below or contact our Parent Engagement Officer Claire Hoyle    ClaireH@afasic.org.uk

Here you can watch a short awareness video that was filmed at our recent DLDFEST event in 2024.
Please share this video to raise awareness of DLD. Video Here

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This card is designed to help people with DLD explain to others what they find difficult and why they may respond in certain ways.

It can be a script for a person for DLD to follow.

A person with DLD can just show it to the person they are speaking to.

The idea of a written support for people to explain their DLD came from the work of Rachel Sievers with adults with DLD (www.brightonspeechtherapist.co.uk ). As one person said, “It’s hard to explain DLD if you have DLD”…

The idea for making this ‘script’ into a card that could be easily accessed in people’s wallets or phones came from Afasic Ambassador Sophie Franks, DLD activist.

We are delighted to announce that this card is now being offered by AFASIC as a free downloadable resource to celebrate DLD Day 2024.

Alternatively Afasic have produced a double sided laminated card which is for sale in the shop click www.afasic.org.uk

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The Talking DLD Podcast - The DLD Project

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The Talking DLD Podcast features special guests from qualified DLD experts to incredible families who share their journey with us.

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Professor Pamela Snow and Dr Charlotte Forwood in conversation with Dr Shaun Ziegenfusz talking all things school and DLD

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Watching a child struggle at school has to be one of the hardest things to witness. In this episode of The Talking DLD Podcast, we’re joined by Professor Pamela Snow and Dr Charlotte Forwood who will help us understand how DLD can affect academic achievement. Click here to download a transcript of this podcast About […]

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Link to DLD Day 2024 Poster

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RADLD DLD Awareness Day 2024 Resources

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We firmly believe that teachers are superheroes. And when it comes to Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) this is doubly the case. When teachers understand about DLD & adapt their teaching, it changes everything. Resources: https://t.co/N5KiPrY8r5 #DLDday #DevLangDis

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NAPLIC | DLD resources for schools and families

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
This short video, ‘Schools: supporting students with DLD’, gives an insight into Developmental Language Disorder and some simple strategies. Perfect for adding into an INSET or staff meeting, especially with the ‘Top tips for school 1 and 2’ handouts below. These both give general strategies for supporting students with Developmental Language Disorder. The video ‘DLD Diagnosis for families’ is for families who have recently learnt that their child has Developmental Language Disorder will find this

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
We firmly believe that teachers are superheroes. And when it comes to Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) this is doubly the case. When teachers understand about DLD & adapt their teaching, it changes everything. Resources: https://t.co/N5KiPrY8r5 #DLDday #DevLangDis https://t.co/GeKOamwGec

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.entities.urls[].title
NAPLIC | DLD resources for schools and families

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.entities.urls[].description
This short video, ‘Schools: supporting students with DLD’, gives an insight into Developmental Language Disorder and some simple strategies. Perfect for adding into an INSET or staff meeting, especially with the ‘Top tips for school 1 and 2’ handouts below. These both give general strategies for supporting students with Developmental Language Disorder. The video ‘DLD Diagnosis for families’ is for families who have recently learnt that their child has Developmental Language Disorder will find this

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
We firmly believe that teachers are superheroes. And when it comes to Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) this is doubly the case. When teachers understand about DLD & adapt their teaching, it changes everything. Resources: https://t.co/N5KiPrY8r5 #DLDday #DevLangDis https://t.co/GeKOamwGec

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
We firmly believe that teachers are superheroes. And when it comes to Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) this is doubly the case. When teachers understand about DLD & adapt their teaching, it changes everything. Resources: https://t.co/N5KiPrY8r5 #DLDday #DevLangDis https://t.co/GeKOamwGec

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
We firmly believe that teachers are superheroes. And when it comes to Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) this is doubly the case. When teachers understand about DLD & adapt their teaching, it changes everything. Resources: https://t.co/N5KiPrY8r5 #DLDday #DevLangDis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].title
NAPLIC | DLD resources for schools and families

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
This short video, ‘Schools: supporting students with DLD’, gives an insight into Developmental Language Disorder and some simple strategies. Perfect for adding into an INSET or staff meeting, especially with the ‘Top tips for school 1 and 2’ handouts below. These both give general strategies for supporting students with Developmental Language Disorder. The video ‘DLD Diagnosis for families’ is for families who have recently learnt that their child has Developmental Language Disorder will find this

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The map shows countries where there is a committee devoted to raise awareness of DLD. We do have ambassadors around the world though! Watch this space for a map that shows where our ambassadors are! @RADLDcam #DLDday #devlangdis It's DLD day this Friday!!

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
The map shows countries where there is a committee devoted to raise awareness of DLD. We do have ambassadors around the world though! Watch this space for a map that shows where our ambassadors are! @RADLDcam #DLDday #devlangdis It's DLD day this Friday!! https://t.co/INIhNtJ2su

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
The map shows countries where there is a committee devoted to raise awareness of DLD. We do have ambassadors around the world though! Watch this space for a map that shows where our ambassadors are! @RADLDcam #DLDday #devlangdis It's DLD day this Friday!! https://t.co/INIhNtJ2su

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
The map shows countries where there is a committee devoted to raise awareness of DLD. We do have ambassadors around the world though! Watch this space for a map that shows where our ambassadors are! @RADLDcam #DLDday #devlangdis It's DLD day this Friday!! https://t.co/INIhNtJ2su

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
The map shows countries where there is a committee devoted to raise awareness of DLD. We do have ambassadors around the world though! Watch this space for a map that shows where our ambassadors are! @RADLDcam #DLDday #devlangdis It's DLD day this Friday!!

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
Our super 2023 #DLDday video has landed! 'Language around the world'. Voiced and animated by people with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Watch and share to raise awareness of DLD!
https://t.co/3g1vDMWblO

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There are around 7000 languages in the world. Each language is made up of words and sentences. Some people find processing and using words and sentences hard...

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
Our super 2023 #DLDday video has landed! 'Language around the world'. Voiced and animated by people with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Watch and share to raise awareness of DLD!
https://t.co/3g1vDMWblO https://t.co/LJ3QfXwPJz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.entities.urls[].description
There are around 7000 languages in the world. Each language is made up of words and sentences. Some people find processing and using words and sentences hard...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
Our super 2023 #DLDday video has landed! 'Language around the world'. Voiced and animated by people with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Watch and share to raise awareness of DLD!
https://t.co/3g1vDMWblO https://t.co/LJ3QfXwPJz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Our super 2023 #DLDday video has landed! 'Language around the world'. Voiced and animated by people with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Watch and share to raise awareness of DLD!
https://t.co/3g1vDMWblO https://t.co/LJ3QfXwPJz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Our super 2023 #DLDday video has landed! 'Language around the world'. Voiced and animated by people with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Watch and share to raise awareness of DLD!
https://t.co/3g1vDMWblO

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
There are around 7000 languages in the world. Each language is made up of words and sentences. Some people find processing and using words and sentences hard...

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
Have a listen to my amazing colleague @SueMarr3 talking about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) on @RidgeradioUk in advance of #DLDday 
https://t.co/QJS3QI08pk 
#DevLangDis https://t.co/hg4euig6wM

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.entities.urls[].title
Saturday Brunch Show with Andrea Oxlade on Ridge Radio 14.10.23 DLD

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
I chat to specialist teacher Sue Marr about Developmental Language Disorder, a little known condition that effect 1 in 14 schoolchildren. She talks about raising awareness, how to spot the signs, and most importantly, where to go for help. Sue is hoping to spread the word about DLD, which she trains educators about from her base at Moor House School in Hurst Green.

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
Have a listen to my amazing colleague @SueMarr3 talking about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) on @RidgeradioUk in advance of #DLDday 
https://t.co/QJS3QI08pk 
#DevLangDis https://t.co/hg4euig6wM

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].text
The biggest gift you can give to help someone with DLD is time, according to Specialist Teacher Sue Marr, who appeared on Ridge Radio as a guest on Andrea Oxlade’s Saturday Brunch Show last weekend to talk all about DLD.

https://t.co/rhunAAYeg3

 #DevLangDis #DLDday https://t.co/OjekUyO8ET

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].entities.urls[].description
The biggest gift you can give to help someone with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is time, according to Specialist Teacher Sue Marr, speaking on Ridge Radio. Marr, who has extensive experience of teaching students with DLD at Moor House School & College and now delivers training for professionals as part of her role with the Moor House Research & Training Institute, appeared as a guest on Andrea Oxlade’s Saturday Brunch Show to talk all about DLD, a hidden but common disability that affects 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.entities.urls[].title
Saturday Brunch Show with Andrea Oxlade on Ridge Radio 14.10.23 DLD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.entities.urls[].description
I chat to specialist teacher Sue Marr about Developmental Language Disorder, a little known condition that effect 1 in 14 schoolchildren. She talks about raising awareness, how to spot the signs, and most importantly, where to go for help. Sue is hoping to spread the word about DLD, which she trains educators about from her base at Moor House School in Hurst Green.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
Have a listen to my amazing colleague @SueMarr3 talking about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) on @RidgeradioUk in advance of #DLDday 
https://t.co/QJS3QI08pk 
#DevLangDis https://t.co/hg4euig6wM

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.includes.tweets[].entities.urls[].description
The biggest gift you can give to help someone with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is time, according to Specialist Teacher Sue Marr, speaking on Ridge Radio. Marr, who has extensive experience of teaching students with DLD at Moor House School & College and now delivers training for professionals as part of her role with the Moor House Research & Training Institute, appeared as a guest on Andrea Oxlade’s Saturday Brunch Show to talk all about DLD, a hidden but common disability that affects 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.includes.tweets[].text
The biggest gift you can give to help someone with DLD is time, according to Specialist Teacher Sue Marr, who appeared on Ridge Radio as a guest on Andrea Oxlade’s Saturday Brunch Show last weekend to talk all about DLD.

https://t.co/rhunAAYeg3

 #DevLangDis #DLDday https://t.co/OjekUyO8ET

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Have a listen to my amazing colleague @SueMarr3 talking about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) on @RidgeradioUk in advance of #DLDday 
https://t.co/QJS3QI08pk 
#DevLangDis https://t.co/hg4euig6wM

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Have a listen to my amazing colleague @SueMarr3 talking about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) on @RidgeradioUk in advance of #DLDday 
https://t.co/QJS3QI08pk 
#DevLangDis https://t.co/hg4euig6wM

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].title
Saturday Brunch Show with Andrea Oxlade on Ridge Radio 14.10.23 DLD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
I chat to specialist teacher Sue Marr about Developmental Language Disorder, a little known condition that effect 1 in 14 schoolchildren. She talks about raising awareness, how to spot the signs, and most importantly, where to go for help. Sue is hoping to spread the word about DLD, which she trains educators about from her base at Moor House School in Hurst Green.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].entities.urls[].description
The biggest gift you can give to help someone with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is time, according to Specialist Teacher Sue Marr, speaking on Ridge Radio. Marr, who has extensive experience of teaching students with DLD at Moor House School & College and now delivers training for professionals as part of her role with the Moor House Research & Training Institute, appeared as a guest on Andrea Oxlade’s Saturday Brunch Show to talk all about DLD, a hidden but common disability that affects 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.referenced_tweets[].text
The biggest gift you can give to help someone with DLD is time, according to Specialist Teacher Sue Marr, who appeared on Ridge Radio as a guest on Andrea Oxlade’s Saturday Brunch Show last weekend to talk all about DLD.

https://t.co/rhunAAYeg3

 #DevLangDis #DLDday https://t.co/OjekUyO8ET

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
Looking to learn more about DLD?

Head to our website for FREE videos and resources including key signs and strategies for teachers and parents.

https://t.co/DmT74TaVU2

#DevLangDis #DLDday #Coulditbelanguage

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.author.name
Moor House Research & Training Institute

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a subset of SLCN, is the term used to diagnose children when they fail to acquire their own language for no obvious reason. You have not allowed cookies and this content may contain cookies. Signs of DLD for teachers 10 key signs that indicate a child may have DLD. Support strategies for teachers Key classroom strategies to support children with DLD. You have not allowed cookies and this content may contain cookies. Signs of DLD for parents/carers 10 key signs that

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
Looking to learn more about DLD?

Head to our website for FREE videos and resources including key signs and strategies for teachers and parents.

https://t.co/DmT74TaVU2

#DevLangDis #DLDday #Coulditbelanguage https://t.co/Q49qCch9Hy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Moor House Research & Training Institute

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Moor House Research & Training Institute

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.entities.urls[].description
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a subset of SLCN, is the term used to diagnose children when they fail to acquire their own language for no obvious reason. You have not allowed cookies and this content may contain cookies. Signs of DLD for teachers 10 key signs that indicate a child may have DLD. Support strategies for teachers Key classroom strategies to support children with DLD. You have not allowed cookies and this content may contain cookies. Signs of DLD for parents/carers 10 key signs that

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
Looking to learn more about DLD?

Head to our website for FREE videos and resources including key signs and strategies for teachers and parents.

https://t.co/DmT74TaVU2

#DevLangDis #DLDday #Coulditbelanguage https://t.co/Q49qCch9Hy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.includes.users[].name
Moor House Research & Training Institute

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Looking to learn more about DLD?

Head to our website for FREE videos and resources including key signs and strategies for teachers and parents.

https://t.co/DmT74TaVU2

#DevLangDis #DLDday #Coulditbelanguage https://t.co/Q49qCch9Hy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Looking to learn more about DLD?

Head to our website for FREE videos and resources including key signs and strategies for teachers and parents.

https://t.co/DmT74TaVU2

#DevLangDis #DLDday #Coulditbelanguage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.author.name
Moor House Research & Training Institute

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a subset of SLCN, is the term used to diagnose children when they fail to acquire their own language for no obvious reason. You have not allowed cookies and this content may contain cookies. Signs of DLD for teachers 10 key signs that indicate a child may have DLD. Support strategies for teachers Key classroom strategies to support children with DLD. You have not allowed cookies and this content may contain cookies. Signs of DLD for parents/carers 10 key signs that

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
Today is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Day! This hidden disability affects 1 in 14 people, making it challenging for them to understand and use language? SPA is actively joining the campaign to raise awareness of DLD. 👏
Find out more here https://t.co/GI2dKNCmcA
#DLDDAY

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
Today is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Day! This hidden disability affects 1 in 14 people, making it challenging for them to understand and use language? SPA is actively joining the campaign to raise awareness of DLD. 👏
Find out more here https://t.co/GI2dKNCmcA
#DLDDAY https://t.co/HtF5OOCuNJ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
Today is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Day! This hidden disability affects 1 in 14 people, making it challenging for them to understand and use language? SPA is actively joining the campaign to raise awareness of DLD. 👏
Find out more here https://t.co/GI2dKNCmcA
#DLDDAY https://t.co/HtF5OOCuNJ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Today is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Day! This hidden disability affects 1 in 14 people, making it challenging for them to understand and use language? SPA is actively joining the campaign to raise awareness of DLD. 👏
Find out more here https://t.co/GI2dKNCmcA
#DLDDAY https://t.co/HtF5OOCuNJ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Today is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Day! This hidden disability affects 1 in 14 people, making it challenging for them to understand and use language? SPA is actively joining the campaign to raise awareness of DLD. 👏
Find out more here https://t.co/GI2dKNCmcA
#DLDDAY

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
The bunting is up @MoorHouseSLCN ready for #DLDday tomorrow. The college coffee shop has cakes with facts on snacks made by our youngest children
#DevLangDis

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
The bunting is up @MoorHouseSLCN ready for #DLDday tomorrow. The college coffee shop has cakes with facts on snacks made by our youngest children
#DevLangDis https://t.co/NQQPp2hMnN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
The bunting is up @MoorHouseSLCN ready for #DLDday tomorrow. The college coffee shop has cakes with facts on snacks made by our youngest children
#DevLangDis https://t.co/NQQPp2hMnN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
The bunting is up @MoorHouseSLCN ready for #DLDday tomorrow. The college coffee shop has cakes with facts on snacks made by our youngest children
#DevLangDis https://t.co/NQQPp2hMnN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
The bunting is up @MoorHouseSLCN ready for #DLDday tomorrow. The college coffee shop has cakes with facts on snacks made by our youngest children
#DevLangDis

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
#DLDday 2023 | Here are 5 things you need to know about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a hidden condition that affects 1 in 14 people.

Learn more about DLD at: https://t.co/PBhxT9vXek & https://t.co/qR1cb3xKst #RADLD

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.entities.urls[].title
The DLD Project | Developmental Language Disorder Information, Resources & Training

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The DLD Project provides evidence-based Developmental Language Disorder information, resources, and training in Australia.

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RADLD – Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder

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Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder

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#DLDday 2023 | Here are 5 things you need to know about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a hidden condition that affects 1 in 14 people.

Learn more about DLD at: https://t.co/PBhxT9vXek & https://t.co/qR1cb3xKst #RADLD https://t.co/4QDSuY8k0g

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The DLD Project | Developmental Language Disorder Information, Resources & Training

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The DLD Project provides evidence-based Developmental Language Disorder information, resources, and training in Australia.

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RADLD – Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder

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Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder

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#DLDday 2023 | Here are 5 things you need to know about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a hidden condition that affects 1 in 14 people.

Learn more about DLD at: https://t.co/PBhxT9vXek & https://t.co/qR1cb3xKst #RADLD https://t.co/4QDSuY8k0g

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#DLDday 2023 | Here are 5 things you need to know about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a hidden condition that affects 1 in 14 people.

Learn more about DLD at: https://t.co/PBhxT9vXek & https://t.co/qR1cb3xKst #RADLD https://t.co/4QDSuY8k0g

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#DLDday 2023 | Here are 5 things you need to know about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a hidden condition that affects 1 in 14 people.

Learn more about DLD at: https://t.co/PBhxT9vXek & https://t.co/qR1cb3xKst #RADLD

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The DLD Project | Developmental Language Disorder Information, Resources & Training

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The DLD Project provides evidence-based Developmental Language Disorder information, resources, and training in Australia.

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RADLD – Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder

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Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder

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The official RADLD #DLD Around the World 2023 video

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The official RADLD #DLD Around the World 2023 video

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This year International DLD Awareness Day is on Friday 20 October. Explore some of the ways to get involved and download some of the resources.

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Here you will find the 2023 #DLDday materials plus resources from previous campaigns.

2023 DLD Around the World RESOURCES
2023 DLD Around the world Memes - social media 2023 DLD Around the world e-signature 2023 DLD Around the world Social Media frame
GET YOUR BAKE ON FOR #DLDDAY

Get your Bake on for #DLDday 2023! We've created all of the resources you'll need to hold a fantastic fundraiser for RADLD. We can't wait to see your photos!
Baked goods donation form BAKE SALE POSTER TEMPLATE dld facts Snack/baked goods labels
MEDIA RELEASE
2023 press release light up event 2023 press release save the date 2023 press release Personal story 2023 press release organisation
RESOURCES

DLD FACT SHEETS
dld facts (fOR sOCIAL mEDIA)
POSTERS
DLD AWARENESS A4 POSTERS
LOGOS

SOCIAL MEDIA / Zoom

Colour-In Sheets
Colour-In sheet | growing with dld
Printable Stickers

NB: You need Avery code L7160 address labels or compatible to print the stickers: 7×3 stickers on each sheet, size 3.81cm x 6.35cm.

Other RADLD Resources
DLD Population Calculator RADLD School Presentation
PREVIOUS #DLDDAY CAMPAIGN RESOURCES
growing with dld Strategies Flyer Think Language, think dld MEMES
social media

Did you know that 84% of people with access to the internet use social media? This is why it's so important we make the most of this free and easy to use platform to raise awareness. We want to spread the word and tell as many people as possible about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

Below, we tell you about some of the ways to get involved on social media to support the campaign!

What social media platforms can I use?

GET INVOLVED

Share our posts and create your own in the lead up to DLD Awareness Day.

Share the #DLDday campaign videos on social media when it is released.

Make sure you use our campaign hashtags #DLDday on all posts.

Use #DevLangDis all year around to discuss DLD

Add @someone to your posts to target an organisation, individual or celebrity that you think needs to know about DLD or DLD Awareness

Update your social media profile with our #DLDday frame

Share the RADLD films!

Media RELEASE

Use our media release templates to submit a story to your local newspaper or magazine. Enter your name or organisation and add your own quotes, photos of your event or views of children/parents/professionals. For any media release inquiries, please contact hello@radld.org.

DLD Awareness Day Activities

Speak at community events. Is there a community meeting you can attend and talk about DLD? Go for it!

Hold a stand. School foyers, train stations, lunch rooms at work. Wherever there is a crowd, a stand would be great.

Hand out resource packs to community services. Services supporting the community who are likely to encounter people with DLD (so every service) would benefit from you stopping by and dropping off some resources. Why not challenge them to support DLD Awareness Day by wearing purple and yellow on the day.

Put up posters. We've got a heap of FREE posters online. Download them and put them up everywhere.

Change your email signature or screensaver. It is a simple but effective way to spread the word to people you know.

Make t-shirts. The RADLD logo is freely available on our website, so why not download it and get creative with your clothing!

Host a lunch and learn session. Get your colleagues together and talk to them about DLD. You can show them one of our Youtube movies.

Put RADLD stickers on everyone and tell them why the need to know and support DLD!

Make and hide #DevLangDis rocks for the public to find. How cool is this idea?! One of our Ambassadors came up with this great way to make the general public more DLD aware. Simply decorate the rocks and hide them all over the community. You could even add an ask for them to share their find online with their networks.

Organise a light up event for a local landmark.

Disclaimer: All material at www.RADLD.org has been created or collated for the express purpose of partnering with the community to foster a substantial increase in international awareness of Developmental Language Disorder. RADLD and the International Committee accept no responsibility for the alteration or misuse of these materials by other parties once downloaded from www.RADLD.org. RADLD and the International Committee reserves the right to protect materials from alteration and misuse, including the RADLD logo.

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Here you will find the 2023 #DLDday materials plus resources from previous campaigns. 2023 DLD Around the World RESOURCES 2023 DLD Around the world poster 2023 DLD TRANSLATIONS poster 2023 DLD Around the world Memes - social media 2023 DLD Around the world e-signature 2023 DLD Around the world...

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Check out this interactive DLD Toolkit from CommIT
https://bit.ly/DLDInteractiveToolkit

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Sketchnote of Dr Charlotte Forwood's presentation at Sharing Best Practice Geelong #SBPGeelong Smoothing the Bumpy Ride: Supporting Adolescents with DLD

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Online resources for professionals to assist with diagnosing DLD

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If you or a family member potentially has Developmental Language Disorder, please contact your local NHS Speech and Language Therapy service (UK) or internationally contact your national Speech-Language Pathology association.

At this point the modules are limited to children and young people. Diagnosing DLD in adults is a growing field, so we hope one day to add further modules about diagnosing DLD in adults.

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If you or a family member potentially has Developmental Language Disorder, please contact your local NHS Speech and Language Therapy service (UK) or internationally contact your national Speech-Language Pathology association. At this point the modules are limited to children and young people.

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Online resources for professionals to assist with diagnosing DLD

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If you or a family member potentially has Developmental Language Disorder, please contact your local NHS Speech and Language Therapy service (UK) or internationally contact your national Speech-Language Pathology association.

At this point the modules are limited to children and young people. Diagnosing DLD in adults is a growing field, so we hope one day to add further modules about diagnosing DLD in adults.

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If you or a family member potentially has Developmental Language Disorder, please contact your local NHS Speech and Language Therapy service (UK) or internationally contact your national Speech-Language Pathology association. At this point the modules are limited to children and young people.

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DLD Book: A guide for parents and families

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DLD Book: A guide for parents and families

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Freely downloadable book about DLD for families and parents by Dr. Tighe.

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Developmental Language Disorder
A guide for Parents and Families
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) impacts 2 children in every classroom, yet few people have heard of it. For years, families of children with difficulty learning language have been told that their child has a "language delay," a phrase that suggests the child will simply catch up one day. We now understand that language learning difficulties can last a lifetime and impact the individual in every aspect of their lives, from academic to social and emotional development.

This free guide is designed to introduce families to DLD and provide information that will clarify their child's current needs while also laying out a realistic view of DLD's role in their child's life over time. Filled with real-life examples and practical suggestions, the guide serves as a starting point for parents, caregivers, teachers, and anyone living with or supporting someone with DLD.

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A guide for Parents and Families Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) impacts 2 children in every classroom, yet few people have heard of it. For years, families of children with difficulty learning language have been told that their child has a "language delay," a phrase that suggests the child will simply catch up one day.

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Karl Reddy, a senior hurler, shares his DLD story.

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Ballyboden GAA senior hurler Karl Reddy (23) is raising awareness of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) for international #DLDday on Friday 14th October 2022. "Growing up with DLD was hard during my early school years, during my time in primary school my blissful ignorance to my condition didn't faze me at all even if I had difficulty communicating with friends, teachers, and pupils alike. However, going into secondary school, I came to the harsh reality that I wasn't like everyone else, I wasn't as academic or fast as a learner. To make things worse my friends started to drift away from me and move on with their lives and make new friends with ease, for me I struggled to advance on. I couldn't quite explain to people what it was I was going through as I couldn't figure out how to say it. This not only took a toll on my academic learning but on my mental health as well. In 4th year I was set up in my social media class and was tasked within my group to come up with and inspirational idea for a video. Although a lot of ideas sprung to mind my mam suggested I should put myself out there and talk about my story with DLD. The group loved the idea of it and so we began filming. I was so nervous about putting myself out there as I feared it would only make my life worse and make me look like an attention seeker. However, this was far from the case and ended being one of the best decisions I made in my life"
Karl was diagnosed with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) when he was six years old. DLD is a hidden but common disability that affects 1 in 14 people. DLD causes difficulties understanding and using language for no known reason. Later in life, without help, those with DLD can struggle with their mental health and in gaining employment. Karl wants everyone to learn about DLD so that those who have the condition will get the help they need. When asked about growing with DLD, Karl said:

Developmental Language Disorder Day (#DLDday), now in its sixth year, is celebrated annually around the world with more than 40 countries involved. This year's campaign theme for DLD Day is ' Growing with DLD', highlighting that DLD is a lifelong, permanent disability. People do not grow out of DLD but with individualised support that can include regular speech-language therapy and educational adjustments they can thrive. It's about growing with DLD.

Karl, when asked what advice he would give his younger self about growing with DLD said: "Talk to your friends, get it out there to your teachers, pupils, coaches etc. talk talk, talk. It doesn't have to be done through a big grandiose video, you just need to get it out there and express yourself and show who you really are. It will be hard to explain it to someone what you're going through but if they are willing to listen and help understand your situation it lifts a massive weight off your shoulder. I wish I had done it sooner [then his video in 4th year] but I was glad I did as it gave everyone around me a perspective of how life is for someone like me and how difficult it can be, and that no matter what your struggles are even if we can see it or not we should do everything we can to help each other and encourage people to live the life they deserve rather than alienating them for their differences."

Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder- Ireland (RADLD-I) is a multi-stakeholder group of campaigners that co-ordinate events nationally for the international awareness day every year. This year, many landmarks around the world including Ireland are set to light up in purple and yellow on or around Friday, 14th October 2022. The 3 Arena Dublin, Kylemore Abbey, Dublin Castle, Cork City Hall, the Rock of Cashel, Kildare County Council, City Hall Limerick, Kilkenny Castle and several Universities are just some of the national landmarks lighting up around the country.
~END~ Notes:
Please join us in our mission to raise awareness of DLD and to advocate for services and supports for those living with this hidden but common condition.

Contacts: Karl Reddy is available for interview - you can contact him on 087-1615705 or email reddykarl2@gmail.com. We also have several parents and children who are happy to share their story with you, please contact Brenda Mockler on 087-7934817 or Sinéad Finn on 087-9265770. Researchers in DLD are also available to be contacted, please email Aoife Gallagher aoife.gallagher@ul.ie with any queries. Link to Karl Reddy's video he released for a 4th year project when he was 16 years old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ips63DwNpa4. Photos attached, captions are in file info

About RADLD-I: We are a national voluntary group of parents, people with DLD, academics, speech and language therapists (SLT) and SLT students who strive to raise greater awareness and understanding of Developmental Language Disorder.

About IASLT: IASLT is the recognised professional body for speech and language therapists in Ireland. It establishes and maintains professional standards and represents Speech and Language Therapists at national and international levels. Membership sits at over 1000 speech and language therapists.
Learn more about #DLDday, DLD & RADLD at:
Confirmed 42 Irish landmarks that will light up for DLD Day include: Áras Contae an Chláir, Clare; Cork City Hall, Cork (8 - 9pm); University College Cork, Cork; County House, Lifford, Donegal; Cardonagh Public Services Centre, Donegal; Milford Public Services Centre, Donegal; Letterkenny Public Services Centre, Donegal; Dungloe Public Services Centre, Donegal; Donegal Town Public Services Centre, Donegal; 3Arena, Dublin; Citywest Business Campus, Dublin; Dublin Castle, Dublin; Red Cow Moran Hotel, Dublin; Phoenix Column, The Phoenix Park, Dublin; St. Maelruain's Church of Ireland, Dublin; The Convention Centre, Dublin; The Mansion House, Dublin; Kylemore Abbey, Galway; National University of Ireland, Galway; Ashe Memorial Hall, Tralee, Kerry; County Buildings, Tralee, Kerry; Killarney Town Hall, Kerry; Princes Quay, Tralee, Kerry; Áras Chill Dara, Naas, Kildare; Kildare County Council Building, Naas, Kildare; Kilkenny Castle, Kilkenny; Áras an Chontae, Portlaoise, Laois; City Hall Merchants Quay, Limerick; Mall Bridge, Westport, Mayo; Buvinda House, Meath County Council, Meath; Tower of Lloyd, Meath; O'Connor Square, Tullamore, Offaly; Tullamore Municipal District, Town Hall, Offaly; City Hall, Quay Street, Sligo; Rock of Cashel, Tipperary; Carrick on Suir Town Hall, Tipperary; Civic Offices, Clonmel, Tipperary; Clonmel Fire Station, Tipperary; 35 The Mall, Waterford; City Hall, Theatre Royal, Waterford; Athlone Railway Bridge, Westmeath; 19 Arches Bridge, Wicklow.

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What's New ? | IASLT News - Irish Association of Speech & Language Therapists

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Ballyboden GAA senior hurler Karl Reddy (23) is raising awareness of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) for international #DLDday on Friday 14th October 2022. "Growing up with DLD was hard during my early school years, during my time in primary school my blissful ignorance to my condition didn't faze me at all even if I had difficulty communicating with friends, teachers, and pupils alike.

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Morrison Media - Award-winning Glasgow PR agency

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In every school classroom 7.5 percent of children have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). It is one of the most common conditions affecting young people, but most have never heard of it. People with DLD have lifelong difficulties understanding and using spoken language that can have a significant impact on learning, employability, and mental health.

In a bid to raise awareness of the condition, The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, their partners and those with the condition will mark DLD Awareness Day on Friday, October 14.

Sixteen-year-old Dunblane schoolboy Murdo, who was diagnosed with the condition two years ago during the first lockdown, hopes this year's DLD Awareness Day can provide a catalyst for change.

He said: "DLD is my 'normal', I don't know any different. I always felt different and didn't understand why and that wasn't a good place to be. My mum went to the school and spoke to my teacher because most days I was not able to get myself out and up to school, it had all got too much.

"I want to help other young people going through my experience. Teachers need to know how to support people with DLD in a different way that works for them. DLD has made me grow up and it has let more people into my life, many of them have made a positive impact on me."

DLD can have a huge impact on the lives of young people like Murdo, but it also impacts their families. Murdo's mother Lee has shared her experience coping with the journey they have been on together as a family.

Lee said: "Murdo used to be very outgoing young child, but we saw a change when he was around seven years old. He became extremely anxious about new or different situations, withdrawing from a range of activities. Murdo developed a very negative image of himself, referring to himself as stupid, a failure and worthless."

The difficulties Murdo was having at school led to the family reaching out for help, which came in the form of speech and language therapy. However, Lee feels more must be done to help others like Murdo who may not even know they have DLD.

Lee said: "It just needs to be 'out there' and it's not. I feel as a society, we are letting these children, young people and adults down. It should have the same profile as autism and same level of funding and resources across the network of support.

"Murdo's speech and language therapist worked hard to develop a connection with him and his network of support including his family and school to really understand what they could do to make a difference and importantly how they would know the strategies were working. Murdo now has a great understanding of how he learns and what he needs throughout his life."

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) has been working to help shine a light on the condition.

RCSLT's Head of Scotland Glenn Carter said: "The RCSLT is committed to raising awareness and providing support to people with Development Language Disorder. We will continue to work with our partners and the Scottish Government to provide the necessary support and conditions to ensure every child in Scotland has access to the support they need."

Developmental Language Disorder Awareness Day is run by the Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder International Committee (RADLD), now in its fifth year, it is celebrated annually around the world with more than 40 countries involved in 2021. RADLD is an international volunteer-driven organisation working to increase awareness of DLD, a hidden, but common condition affecting 1 in 14 people.

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Dunblane pupil who battles development language disorder highlights the importance of DLD Awareness Day - Morrison Media

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In every school classroom 7.5 percent of children have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). It is one of the most common conditions affecting young people, but most have never heard of it. People with DLD have lifelong difficulties understanding and using spoken language that can have a significant impact on learning, employability, and mental health.

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Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Two in each Australian classroom suffering developmental language disorder

The condition impairs speaking and listening, and a new study by Curtin University finds girls in particular are going untreated.

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Two in each Australian classroom suffering developmental language disorder

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The condition impairs speaking and listening, and a new study by Curtin University finds girls in particular are going untreated.

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Lewisham and Greenwich Trust video with students sharing insights about having DLD and what helps.

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Western Trust SALT Sinead talks about DLD.

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DLD Awareness Day | Sinead Marlow, Speech and Language Therapist

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Our Speech and Language Therapy Team are delighted to support this year's World Development Language Disorder Awareness Day. Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a hidden but common disability that affects 1 in 14 people causing difficulties understanding and using language for no known reason.

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DLD Information and Resources for Schools

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DLD Information and Resources for Schools

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A Padlet of freely available resources curated by Rachel Kelly including DLD facts and identification tools.

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Darcie's story - a video about Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) #2in30

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The top 10 research priorities relating to Developmental Language Disorder, including outcomes for individuals across settings and impact of teacher training on academic attainment for adolescents with DLD in secondary schools.

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A plain English explainer responding to the following questions:

1.  Is oral language comprehension even a real thing?
2. So what is oral language comprehension?
3. Why does oral language comprehension matter so much?
4. How do we test oral language comprehension?

It also addresses assessment and treatment issues.

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Banter Speech & Language | Sydney speech pathologists helping child and adult clients, and other speech pathologists.

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In previous articles, we've:

But what do we mean when we use the term 'oral language comprehension'?

This is a big topic. We'll break it down, starting with the name.

Oral language comprehension is sometimes called:

"language comprehension";

"receptive language"; or

"listening comprehension".

All these terms mean the same thing. But, whatever you call it, oral language comprehension is:

controversial as a standalone idea;

hard to define;

important for people of all ages and abilities;

assessed by speech-language pathologists, especially when we want to know whether someone has a developmental language disorder (DLD) or other language problem;

tricky to measure; and

tough to treat if there is a problem.

1. Is oral language comprehension even a real thing?

Some researchers think there is not much point talking about oral language comprehension in isolation from the rest of language. Language is a complex system - all the parts affect each other, sometimes in unpredictable ways.

We think they're right. But, in the clinic, when we come across someone struggling to participate fully at school, work, or in life, we want to check whether they are having problems understanding language.

2. So what is oral language comprehension?

We use four main frameworks to think about language comprehension:

Model 1: A general framework

Oral language comprehension is a "process during which information is received and then transformed into different types of representations until the meaning is worked out using your existing general knowledge" (e.g. Bishop, 1997; Acosta-Rodriguez et al., 2022 - see full citation below).
What on earth does this mean?
Let me explain in plain English with concrete examples:

In our lives, we hear all sorts of information, including:

spoken language (e.g., from family members, friends, teachers, colleagues, and others, as well as recorded spoken words on the radio, TV, and Internet); and

non-language sounds (e.g. sirens, dogs barking, and construction noise).

Oral language comprehension is - you guessed it - about spoken language, not about how we interpret other types of noise.*

Language-based information includes:

'Discourse' means spoken or written language used in a particular place and time. For oral language, it includes spoken language in conversations with other people, e.g. during play, or in meetings at work, as well when listening to others speak at length, e.g. when telling us stories or explaining how things work.

When we hear spoken language, we turn it into different types of representations in our brains. This is probably best explained with an example:

Imagine you hear a loud knock on your door at 11.30pm on a Saturday night in the middle of winter. Groggily, you open the door and find a police officer pointing up urgently at your front window. She says: "The steel bars are broken".

You would hear the police officer, and transform what she said into different kinds of representations in your brain:

speech sound representations (phonemes), e.g. the sounds /b/, /a/ /z/;

word representations (lexemes), e.g., the word "bars";

representations of meaningful word parts (morphemes), e.g., recognising the regular plural -s after the noun "bar", means there is more than one bar;

sentence grammar representations (syntax), e.g., recognising:

a subject-verb-complement sentence, with "bars" as the subject; and

the different parts of speech used in the sentence: definite article ('the') + adjective ('steel') + noun ('bars') + present tense verb ('are') + adjective ('broken');

knowledge of word-meanings and relationships between word (semantics), e.g. knowing that the "bars" being referred to are steel rods, and not the type of bars young adults frequent on Saturday nights; and

pragmatic knowledge, e.g., that - taken together - the spoken sentence and gestures of the police officer, the social context of a police officer coming to your house late at night during winter to speak with you, and your existing knowledge of the world (including about police, and the function of bars on windows), suggest that the broken steel bars are something you should be concerned about as a priority.

Model 2: Referential and Inferential Language Comprehension

When you step up from words and sentences to discourse (e.g. conversations and stories), you need inferential comprehension. As we explain here in the context of reading, inferencing is the ability to combine:

what is being said; with

what we already know,

to understand the spoken language. When talking about spoken discourse, some researchers describe oral language comprehension as a system with two levels:

(i) Referential comprehension

When you hear a story, you process the exact words and sentences, including the vocabulary and the grammar used, to understand what is being said. This is sometimes described as a 'surface level' or 'lower level' task (Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), and it includes two components:

Word comprehension links the sequence of sounds within a given word with your mental dictionary of words. It includes knowledge of subword units like phonemes, syllables and morphemes).

Sentence comprehension involves using your knowledge of words and syntax together to form more complex units of meaning.

(ii) Inferential comprehension

When you hear a story, you are not trying to memorise the words and sentences. Instead, you seek to construct a mental model or situation model of the characters, events, objects, places and actions described, and the relations among them. This is sometimes described as a 'higher level' task (Tapiero, 2007; Johnson-Laird, 1983).

You must integrate the information you hear into a coherent structure that unites the different statements, and incorporate them into your general knowledge. In doing this, the main types of inferences to understand the language you hear are:

local inferences, also known as "gap-filling inferences"; and

global inferences, also known as "text-connection" or "bridging" inferences (e.g. Graesser et al., 1994; Cain & Oakhill, 1999).

We explain local and global inferences in more detail, with examples, here. In essence, you connect what you hear, the context in which you hear it, and your general knowledge of the world to make sense of the language you hear.

Model 3: Oral language comprehension as a component of the Simple View of Reading

Language comprehension is one of two main components of the Simple View of Reading. We've written about this useful model extensively, including here and here and here and, most recently, here. (We've fans!)

The cognitive foundations framework. Source: Hoover and Tunmer (2019).

The latest iteration of the model - called the Cognitive Foundations Framework - subdivides language comprehension into the following components:

We use this model most frequently with students with reading difficulties, including reading comprehension difficulties. In practice, this model is consistent with the general and two-level models outlined above. But the Simple View of Reading can help us to think clearly about priorities, and the best sequence of therapies to help beginning readers, as well as students with both language and reading difficulties.

Model 4: Capacities-focused vs. processing models

Not all health and education professionals agree on the core underlying processes and capacities that affect or contribute to oral language comprehension. As we've outlined here (again in the context of reading):

Capacities are about language abilities - the language that people can understand.

Processes are cognitive operations underpinning language, including things like the mechanisms for converting speech sounds that reach the ear into phonological representations, and then into links to the brain's internal dictionary of words.

This all sounds a bit theoretical. But it can have a big impact on how you think about, assess, and support someone with oral language problems. In our practice, for example, we:

focus on functional capacities, including the ability (or capacity) to understand language in meaningful contexts;

work "top down" on expressive and receptive language tasks (not sub-skills and processes); and

we try to work (or emulate) contexts that are helpful to a client in their real world (e.g. at home, school, work, in the community, and in social settings).

You can read more about our general approach to language therapy here.

Many other professionals (including many speech pathologists) take a more "bottom up" approach, working on processes and sub-skills, e.g. auditory processing, working memory, and executive functioning. This is based on a theory that gains in the efficiency of a process that underpins language will result in language and reading comprehension gains.

We try to keep an open mind about approaches that focus on sub-processes underpinning language because they are appealing in theory, and logical. But, to date, we've yet to see much independent, quality peer-reviewed evidence showing that improvements in specific sub-processes transfer to gains in language skills.

3. Why does oral language comprehension matter so much?

Good oral language comprehension skills help people to survive and thrive across their lifespan, including:

as babies and toddlers learning to speak, and to understand, and to say their first words;

as preschoolers, e.g. when learning language with their parents, peers and educators, e.g. through play, books and audiobooks;

as young students starting school, e.g., with school readiness;

as students at school, including understanding words, understanding complex grammar, following instructions, and understanding verbal maths problems and other STEM subjects;

as readers of all ages;

as high schoolers, e.g. with school success, generally, including understanding Tier 2 and academic vocabulary;

with appropriate texting and social media use;

with higher level study and lifelong learning skills;

in the workforce, including understanding legal rights and responsibilities, following reasonable directions, and dealing with conflicts;

understanding their consumer rights and responsibilities;

with financial literacy;

interacting with the government authorities, including the justice system;

not being exploited or scammed, e.g. by misleading claims, charlatans, scammers, conspiracy theories, and schemes;

enjoying many hobbies and interests;

having healthy relationships with family members, romantic partners, and friendships;

staying healthy and fit and understanding your rights to your health information;

retirement; and

old age.

4. How do we test oral language comprehension?

Lots of norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests claim to measure oral language comprehension. It's important to test different components of oral language:

Oral comprehension of words is often assessed by showing people multiple pictures and asking them to point to the item(s) you name or describe. For example, you might ask a young person to look at these pictures:

"Point to the duck" or "Point to the bird with the long neck" or "Point to the ones with feathers" or "Point to the one that cannot fly" or "Point to the one that lives on a farm" or "Point to the one with a cockpit".

Oral language comprehension of complex and multi-part instructions is often assessed by giving the person instructions and asking them to do what you say. For example, you might show them these pictures:

Then, you would say something like:

"Before you point to the red star, point to the white triangle and the yellow circle" or "If the star is blue, point to the white triangle, but if the star is not blue point to the shape with no sides" or "Point to the one in the middle after pointing to the one on the left, and then point to the one that is between two other shapes".

For younger clients, you might give them instructions using things nearby, e.g.: "Throw the bear, hug the ball, and then stand on the chair." (We explain below why these instructions are so weird.)

Oral comprehension of sentence structures (including morphology and complex sentences) is often tested by showing multiple pictures or videos and asking a person to point to the one you say. For example, to test comprehension of passive sentences, you might show the person these videos and then say:

"Point to 'The TIE Fighter that is being chased by the dragon'."

We test referential and inferential oral comprehension of discourse by reading out paragraphs or stories (without showing the person the text) and then asking the person to answer questions about them. These often look like traditional comprehension exercises (but we read the passages out loud to the person being tested).

5. Oral language comprehension is hard to measure accurately

A person's oral language comprehension is hard to test reliably for several reasons:

We can't truly know what is going on inside someone else's head during a test.

Lots of things can affect how a person performs on a language comprehension test. These include:

Most of us use sneaky tricks, e.g. adopting rules of thumb like "do what you normally do with a thing" when we don't understand what someone has said to us. Tricks like these are the main reason we said "throw the bear and hug the ball" in our instruction example above (rather than the other way around, which would be more natural).

In the real world, people rely on and and imitate others, even when we don't understand why. It's a key strategy we all use, e.g. when traveling to a new country where we don't speak the local language. These tricks help us to fit in, but can make it look like we understand more than we actually do.

In practice, we want to monitor a person's language comprehension over time in different situations and on different functional tasks, and not over interpret the results of a single test.

6. There are fewer effective treatments for receptive language difficulties (compared to expressive language interventions)

Most evidence-based language interventions to date target expressive language, rather than receptive language. There are many reasons for this:

There is less evidence that receptive language interventions work (e.g. Law et al., 2003; and Rinaldi et al., 2021).

Compared with people with expressive language difficulties, there are fewer clients with language comprehension problems (making it harder to recruit them for studies).

In some cases, severe weaknesses in language comprehension are associated with weaker cognitive skills (even if they remain within normal limits overall), making treatment more challenging (e.g. Rinaldi et al., 2021).

Compared with typically developing children and children with expressive language difficulties only, children with receptive language and "mixed" receptive-expressive language difficulties are more likely to have long-term issues with language development, literacy, behaviour and social development (e.g., Boyle et al., 2010).

Some clinicians (including me) think the best way to improve receptive language skills (and to monitor comprehension) is to work on functional expressive language goals.

This is not to say there is no evidence to support language therapy for receptive language therapy. Here are some examples:

in 2019, Dr Emily Dawes published a brilliant study that showed significant receptive language gains for a group of 5-year-old students' comprehension of narratives and inferences. Very generously, Dr Dawes and her colleagues have published their treatment protocol and resources here. We use an adapted version of this intervention in our clinic with preschoolers and young students.

In early 2022, Dr Acosta-Rodriguez and colleagues published a study outlining an effective intervention for referential and inferential oral language comprehension skills in preschoolers with developmental language disorder (see full citation below). The intervention involved a partnership between teachers and speech pathologists, and resulted in clinically significant improvements in understanding word classes, sentence structures, and semantic fluency; and

In 2020, Tarvainen and colleagues published a study showing positive effects for oral language in students with developmental language disorder under 8 years of age.

Bottom line

We got there!

In this article, we outlined oral language comprehension as an idea, reviewed some models to help think about it in practice, and explained why it's so important. We then looked at how oral language comprehension is assessed, and why it's so hard to measure. We looked briefly at some of the evidence for helping people with language comprehension difficulties.

Let's conclude by acknowledging we have a lot more to learn about language comprehension and language comprehension problems. We need more (and better) evidence-based programs to help people with difficulties understanding language, including for children, adolescents and adults with DLD and other language disorders.
Key source:
Acosta-Rodriguez, V.M., Ramírez-Santana, G.M. & Hernández-Expósito, S. (2022), Intervention for oral language comprehension skills in preschoolers with developmental language disorder. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders. 57: 90-102. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1460-6984.12676

*The distinction between spoken language and all noise is one of the main theoretical differences between oral language comprehension disorders and auditory processing disorders, although it's confounded in practice by the fact that many auditory processing tests rely on or include language.

Related articles:

Oral language: what is it and why does it matter so much for school, work, and life success?

Language therapy works. But can we make it better? (October 2021 update, incorporating important research findings published in 2021)

"I don't understand what I'm reading" - reading comprehension problems (and what to do about them)

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD): A free guide for families (2021) - revised and updated

24 practical ways to help school-aged children cope with language and reading problems at school and home

How to help your school-age child learn new words - the nuts and bolts of how I actually do it in therapy

Speaking for themselves: why I choose ambitious syntax goals to help students put their words together (with research updates and resource links)

Following instructions: why so many of us struggle with more than one step

For reading, school and life success, which words should we teach our kids? How should we do it?

Focusing speech therapy on functional outcomes: a refresher

Play-based, peer-mediated pragmatic language intervention for school-aged children

Stories help students to understand and remember new information. Here's why.

Five ways to boost your child's oral language and reading comprehension skills with sequencing

Help your child to fill in the gaps, join the dots, and read between the lines! (Improve inferencing skills for better reading and language comprehension)

What I think about when I meet a child who can't read

Too many children can't read. We know what to do. But how should we do it?

Dyslexia vs Developmental Language Disorder: same or different, and what do we need to know about their relationship?

Not about 'fixing': using the 'F-Word Framework' to support children with communication disorders and their families

Lockdown and oral language therapy: practical things we can do to make things better for everyone in these tough times

Kick-start your child's reading with speech sound knowledge (phonological awareness)

When "steel meets steel": grammar doesn't need to be dull

Parents: teach categories to your kids to ignite language development

Light up language and reading comprehension with these key higher level language skills

I want to help my late talker to speak, but I'm stuck at home. What can I do?

Reading with - not to - your pre-schoolers: how to do it better (and why)

Classic Audiobooks for Preschoolers

Is your child ready for school? Focusing on what matters most

My child used to be so good at maths. What happened?

Starting high school? 6 practical, evidence-based principles to help students succeed at STEM subjects

How to help our secondary teachers support teenagers with language disorders at school

Want better school results? Avoid the hype and use free, evidence-based learning strategies

Test Scores: What do they mean?

My child is learning two languages: what do I need to know about bilingual development?

Secret plans and clever tricks: how young children can fool us into thinking they understand more than they really do

Speech-Language Pathologist. Lawyer. Father. Reader. Writer. Speaker.

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Oral language comprehension: what is it? A plain English explainer | Banter Speech & Language

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In previous articles, we've: described oral language and language therapy; explained that oral language includes oral language comprehension; andoutlined how oral language comprehension skills affect reading comprehension. But what do we mean when we use the term 'oral language comprehension'? This is a big topic. We'll break it down, starting with the name.

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A comprehensive guide to understanding DLD and supporting students within mainstream schools.
Thanks to Jasmyn Hall @Jasmyn_K_Hall for sharing.

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Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives

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Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives

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Common questions from parents and speech language pathologists

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Common questions from parents and speech language pathologists

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Includes a 2022 update. Thanks to Professor W. Scharff Rethfeldt for sharing.

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FAQs from the Multilingual and Multicultural Affairs Committee | IALP : International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP)

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Visit the RADLD website to download resources in the following languages:
Arabic
Chinese - traditional and simplified
Danish
Dutch
French
German
Greek
Icelandic
Italian
Norwegian
Portuguese - Brazilian and European
Slovak
Slovene
Welsh

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Newly translated resources for 2022 will be posted here as they are available.

Thank you to the many volunteers who have translated these materials. All translated resources are listed alphabetically by language.
Disclaimer - these resources have been translated into languages other than English with the support of volunteer translators. This has been undertaken by translating into the local language and then translating back to English to check validity. If you have any feedback or are interested in volunteering to translate materials please email hello@radld.org

Stay up to date

Get the latest updates from the RADLD team straight to your inbox.

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Newly translated resources for 2022 will be posted here as they are available. Thank you to the many volunteers who have translated these materials. All translated resources are listed alphabetically by language. Disclaimer - these resources have been translated into languages other than English with the support of volunteer translators.

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Useful information from DLD and Me.

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Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a problem understanding and/or using language. Reading and writing might be difficult for a person with DLD but the problem is broader than that. From an early age, people with DLD will have difficulty using language when they talk or understanding other people's talk. DLD is 50 times more prevalent than hearing impairment and five times more prevalent than autism. Children with DLD are considerably slower than other children to develop spoken vocabulary and grammar despite normal intelligence and ample opportunity. DLD is a life-long condition that impairs social and academic functions.

Identifying Developmental Language Disorders (DLD)

Screening for spoken language problems such as DLD is not routine in our schools; although school professionals routinely screen for vision, hearing and reading problems. This is unfortunate because DLD is a common but hidden disability. How does a diagnosis of a child with DLD come about? Typically, the process begins when a caring adult shares concerns about a child's ability to communicate or notices behaviors that could be signs of poor communication such as acting out or failing in the classroom. This adult could be a parent or other relative or professional such as a teacher or pediatrician. A number of red flags in the child's speech and language development can trigger these concerns. The next step is to seek an evaluation from a speech-language pathologist.

Evaluating Communication

A speech-language pathologist performs the evaluation of the child. The nature of the evaluation will depend on the child's age and the concerns that prompted the evaluation. Typically, the speech-language pathologist will assess the child's interest in communicating, the ease with which the child's speech is understandable, and the ability of the child to understand and express words and sentences. The evaluation usually has three steps:

The speech-language pathologist interviews the parents and the teacher, if the child is in school. The goal of the interviews is to document the child's health and educational history and to learn about the child's strengths and weakness in the area of communication.

The speech-language pathologist observes the child during conversation or storytelling. The goal is to note problems pronouncing words, finding the right words, building grammatical sentences, or including relevant information. If the child is in school, the speech-language pathologist will likely observe him in the classroom to document any problems he has understanding his teacher or participating in classroom conversation.

The child will take a battery of standardized tests. The goal of the tests is to compare the child's speech, language and overall communication to expected levels given her age.

During the evaluation, the speech-language pathologist is trying to answer two key questions:

Is the child significantly poorer in some aspect of speech, language, or overall communication than other children who are the same age?

If so, does this problem prevent the child from functioning well socially, emotionally, or academically?

If the answers are yes, then the speech-language pathologist will determine what kind of problem it is. For example, the speech-language pathologist might administer additional tests to see whether the problem is Childhood Apraxia of Speech or DLD. If the problem is DLD, it might be necessary to see other professionals to diagnose potential co-existing conditions such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder or to rule out potential causes such as Intellectual Disability, Hearing Loss, or Autism Spectrum Disorder. Remember that most cases of DLD do not have a known cause. It is still important to diagnose and treat these cases of DLD.

Assessing the Child's Needs

DLD varies from child to child and from age to age.

One preschooler with DLD might need help with learning new words while another might need help following directions. A seventh grader with DLD might require support to organize written work or might benefit from conversational strategies.

Once DLD is diagnosed, the speech-language pathologist (SLP) can complete detailed assessments to determine the specific needs of the individual child. This process is a bridge between diagnosing the problem and reducing the problem.

Finding a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP)

Speech-language pathologists work in hospitals, clinics, private practices, and schools. In the U.S., a speech-language pathologist should hold a Master's, Clinical Doctorate, or Ph.D. degree and a certificate of clinical competency from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. People who have this certification will have the initials "CCC-SLP" after their signatures. The speech-language pathologist should hold a license to practice in your state of residence. If you are considering a speech-language pathologist in a hospital, clinic, or private practice, be sure to seek one who has ample experience with language problems in children.

By the law specified in the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) Part B, public schools are required to identify and evaluate, at no charge, children who might need special education or related services such as speech-language therapy. This requirement covers any child from age 3 to 21, even if the child does not attend a public school. If you are concerned about your child's communication abilities, it is wise to request an evaluation by a speech-language pathologist at your local public school.

IDEA Part C mandates free services for children from birth to 3 and their families. If you have concerns about your child's early communication development, you can find State-specific Part C Coordinators here.

References

ASHA ProFind. Accessed 2/19/19

Centers for Disease Control. Accessed 12/14/18

IDEA: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Accessed 2/19/19

Norbury, C. F., Gooch, D., Wray, C., Baird, G., Charman, T., Simonoff, E., ... & Pickles, A. (2016). The impact of nonverbal ability on prevalence and clinical presentation of language disorder: evidence from a population study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 57(11), 1247-1257.

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Diagnosing and Treating Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

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Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a problem understanding and/or using language. Reading and writing might be difficult for a person with DLD but the problem is broader than that. From an early age, people with DLD will have difficulty using language when they talk or understanding other people's talk.

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Linda Graham and Haley Tancredi from The Centre for Inclusive Education - QUT share important information about DLD via this article.

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Developmental language disorder or DLD is a lifelong disorder that affects language comprehension and expression. People with DLD find it more difficult to say what they mean and to understand others.

About two students in every classroom of 30 will have DLD, so it is about as common as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and much more common than autism.

In fact, DLD has been described as the most common disorder that most people " have never heard of ".

We are researchers in inclusive education, who specialise in how schools can best support students who experience language difficulties. We work with a lot of these students and know how easily these difficulties are either missed or misinterpreted.

How does this happen?

In a new study, our team at QUT's Centre for Inclusive Education surveyed more than 260 Australian teachers in both primary and secondary schools.

We asked them to rate how good they were at identifying students with DLD, from 1 = "poor" to 5 ="excellent". The average response was 2.77 (or just below "reasonable").

Read more: If your child has reading, school or social struggles, it may be DLD: Developmental language disorder

Participants were then provided with a list of ten characteristics and asked to identify those reflecting difficulties with speech (how we say sounds and words), those reflecting difficulties with language (how we share ideas), and those reflecting difficulties with both. It is important teachers can distinguish between the two to provide the right support.

Their overall accuracy was 48%, suggesting teachers need to know more about DLD than they think they do. Worryingly, discrepancies between teachers' perceived and actual knowledge could work to prevent them from seeking the professional learning they need.

Under the radar

DLD flies under the radar because its characteristics are subtle and easily misinterpreted. But the implications are serious if teachers don't know about DLD or how to support these students.

Students with DLD struggle academically and socially because language is how friendships are made and the school curriculum is taught. Students with DLD often perform well below their classmates.

Without support, students with DLD can begin to feel ashamed, frustrated, and misunderstood, which can lead to behavioural problems, suspension, leaving school early and unemployment.

What should parents and teachers look for?

DLD has been described as " hiding in plain sight " because it is mistaken for other things, such as poor behaviour or lack of interest in school.

But there are some indicators which should prompt further investigation by a qualified speech pathologist. These include:

difficulties learning to read, followed by avoidance of reading

difficulties with writing, often characterised by mistakes when it comes to sequencing in a story (explaining what happened and when)

difficulty following instructions or directions. Problems in this area are particularly noticeable when the child is provided with multiple instructions but misses key steps or becomes muddled without seeking help from peers

appearing chatty, but having a relatively limited vocabulary for their age. A child may use a lot of "filler" words like, "things" or "stuff" in place of words that they either don't know or can't recall

using substitutes that sound similar but do not have the same meaning. For example, "sufficient" instead of "efficient", or "pacific" rather than "specific"

using made up words or incorrect word combinations, such as "tooken" or "racehorsing", beyond the early years of school when errors like this are not uncommon.

These indicators are often not noticed by teachers and parents/carers who act as interpreters and guess what the child really means without even being aware that they are doing it.

Although well-intentioned, this can mean that the child's difficulties with language remain undetected.

What helps students with DLD?

Because DLD is not as well-known as ADHD or autism, some misperceptions exist. One is it can be "cured" through speech-language therapy. As many as four in five (81.7%) Australian teachers in the QUT study believed this to be the case.

While speech pathology support is important, particularly in the early years, it will not address ongoing comprehension challenges faced by children with DLD, especially in the classroom.

Here, teachers can make a difference. In another study published this year, we asked 50 students in years 7 to 10 with language and behavioural difficulties, "what makes an excellent teacher?". They said excellent teachers made themselves easy to understand by:

reducing the number of instructions and the "wordiness" of explanations, as well as the speed and complexity of what they say

building in pauses to allow students' time to process instructions

providing written instructions as well as simple visual supports

emphasising and reiterating key points

introducing and explaining new or tricky words

making sure they have students' full attention before teaching

regularly maintaining that attention through cues, gestures and routines.

These simple practices are critical for students with DLD, but they also benefit all students. This is because we all learn and process language in the same way. If teachers are very clear with students, it reduces the likelihood a student will get overwhelmed or misunderstand a lesson.

Where to go next

Parents who are worried about language development should talk to their child's teacher, who can follow up with the school's learning support team.

Read more: From shopping lists to jokes on the fridge - 6 ways parents can help their primary kids learn to write well

Parents and teachers can also access more information about DLD from the Raising Awareness of DLD website, listen to this federal government-supported podcast or this QUT presentation on supporting students with DLD in the classroom.

Most importantly, they need to know and remember that with the right support, students with DLD can succeed socially and academically.
Jaedene Glasby was the lead author of the first study described in this article.

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What is DLD - the most common disorder you have 'never heard of'?

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Developmental language disorder or DLD is a lifelong disorder that affects language comprehension and expression. People with DLD find it more difficult to say what they mean and to understand others. About two students in every classroom of 30 will have DLD, so it is about as common as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and much more common than autism.

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What is DLD?

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Rocco, Hannah, Aleysha, Max, Maggie and Luke sharing their dreams, aspirations and achievements with us all!

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Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is still very much a hidden disability. DLD impacts people all over the world from all socio-economic backgrounds. 

This year's theme recognises that DLD is ‘developmental’ which means it starts in childhood, but it doesn’t go away. As individuals grow, what DLD looks like and how it impacts changes, and the support that’s needed changes too.

It's about Growing with DLD.  Thank you  to Rocco, Hannah, Aleysha, Max, Maggie and Luke for sharing their dreams, aspirations and achievements with us! Thank you to your families for being such amazing advocates and for allowing us to share your stories.  Thank you to Dr Samuel Calder too for your support and advice along the way. 

Research shows that there are two children with DLD in every classroom and difficulties often go unnoticed until children get to school.  The first step to addressing public health concerns is increasing awareness.

Please like and share this video with the hashtags #DLDday #devlangdis

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Racing car driver and university student, Sunny, talks about her experiences with DLD.

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Strategies for all ages as well as specific ages

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The official RADLD #Growing with DLD 2022 video

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The official RADLD #Growing with DLD 2022 video

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Free online, on-demand short course providing a snapshot of language and Developmental Language Disorder. Designed by Charlotte Forwood and Shaun Ziegenfusz for The DLD Project, the course features video bites, recommended reading/viewing/listening, retrieval practice, pondering questions and sketchnotes summarising key information.

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Course Information

The What is Language? What is DLD? course has been created to give teachers and families a brief overview of language and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). It provides a starting point for conversations and more in depth exploration of language and DLD, a hidden but common disability that affects two children in the average classroom of 30 students.

The course starts by offering a snapshot of language and a window into the complexities of communication. It concludes with an overview of DLD, how to identify students with DLD in the classroom and supports that can be put in place to help students with DLD to learn.

The course should take between 1 - 3 hours to complete, depending on whether or not participants engage with the optional recommended readings, podcasts and videos. It has been designed to be self-paced so there is no set timeframe for completion. Participants will receive a certificate of completion once all compulsory elements of the course have been completed.

Course Instructors

DR CHARLOTTE FORWOOD - WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

Charlotte Forwood is a registered Teacher and Certified Practising Speech Pathologist working in both the primary and secondary school settings.

Charlotte has had a varied career path encompassing teaching roles, speech pathology practice, educational publishing and consulting. She has worked in government, independent and specialist schools in Australia and the UK. She is the co-designer of ISV's Middle Years Language Consultancy Program and the Secondary Students Language Consultancy Program and the author of the award winning STEM Investigations resource for Year 3 - 6 students.

Charlotte has a particular interest in vocabulary development (the focus of her PhD thesis), language and literacy skills in primary/adolescence, the science of learning and the language associated with metacognition. She also enjoys tinkering with tech and opportunities for collaboration with individuals and organisations beyond the classroom.

Charlotte is currently a global ambassador for Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder (RADLD), coordinator of the Eastern Melbourne branch of Think Forward Educators, co-coordinator of the Boroondara Gifted Network and a designer for The DLD Project.

SHAUN ZIEGENFUSZ - WHAT IS DLD?

Shaun Ziegenfusz is a speech pathologist, and researcher with more than 10 years experience working with people with DLD and their families. He currently works in private practice and collaboratively with schools to provide assessment and intervention pathways.

Shaun is also a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) candidate at Griffith University where he researches the needs and necessary supports for school-aged students with DLD from the perspective of key stakeholders, as well as being a volunteer member of the Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder (RADLD) International Committee.

Additionally, Shaun regularly lectures at a number of Australian universities to support future speech pathologists to grow their knowledge.

Shaun is passionate about blending clinical experience and research to support students, families, professionals and schools.

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What is Language? + What is DLD? - The DLD Project

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The What is Language? What is DLD? course has been created to give teachers and families a brief overview of language and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). It provides a starting point for conversations and more in depth exploration of language and DLD, a hidden but common disability that affects two children in the average classroom of 30 students.

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Information about DLD Together - a joint NAPLIC and AFASIC course for parents of children with DLD. Presented by Claire Hoyle at NAPLIC 2022.

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Overview of Rose Brooks' research into inclusive vocabulary teaching (whole class approach.)

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Key points about research about the brain and students with DLD. Presentation by Saloni Krishnan at NAPLIC 2022.

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Summary of the research presented by Dr Samuel Calder at the Speech Pathology Australia Beyond Borders Conference 2022.

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Engaging multiple stakeholders to improve speech and language therapy services in schools: an appreciative inquiry-based study

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Engaging multiple stakeholders to improve speech and language therapy services in schools: an appreciative inquiry-based study

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Co-design of the ideal speech and language therapy and support in school - with teachers, parents and students

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Peer Review reports

Background

For decades, inter-professional collaboration (IPC) has been recognised in policy as essential if outcomes for children with developmental disabilities in school are to improve [ 1, 2, 3]. This is particularly so for children with developmental language disorders (DLD) because their difficulties have implications - not just for communication in school, but for their learning [ 4, 5]. Working collaboratively in schools presents health service planners and practitioners with complex challenges, many of which remain unresolved. Consequently, many children with DLD go unidentified or receive inadequate support in school [ 6], resulting in poor long term outcomes. Specifically, children with DLD may do less well in national examinations [ 7, 8], are at risk of emotional behavioural difficulties [ 9, 10], can struggle to gain employment [ 11], and to live independently as adults [ 7].

According to the World Health Organisation [ 12], IPC occurs when, "two or more individuals from different professional backgrounds with complementary skills interact to create something that none had previously possessed or could have come to on their own" [p36]. The desired outcome of IPC is 'collaborative advantage' or the possibility of creating something greater collectively than that which is achieved when practitioners work alone [ 12, 13]. If SLTs and teachers can work collaboratively towards an agreed set of goals, then a child with DLD can attain improved language, literacy and educational outcomes [ 14, 15, 16]. In the process, practitioners may also develop enhanced skills and knowledge; that is, teachers may better modify their language to children with DLD in the classroom and SLTs may gain knowledge about the curriculum [ 17, 18].

Theoretical framework of the study

D'Amour et al. [ 19] propose a model which provides a useful framework to develop our understanding of IPC in this context. The model has four elements, two of which relate to the process of collaboration at an individual level and two others to IPC factors at an organisational level.

Individual level dimensions are shared goals and vision and internalization. Having shared goals and vision refers to having an agreed set of outcomes and a direction to work towards. Internalization describes the degree to which those involved have an awareness of the differences between them, and the degree to which these differences are managed. According to D'Amour et al. [ 19], managing difference is necessary to foster a sense of belonging and of trust between across those involved. In the case of SLTs and teachers, several barriers at this level have been discussed in the literature. Some of these relate to professional/philosophical differences and others to practical/logistical issues. A lack of shared language and understanding between the professionals involved about DLD has been identified consistently as a barrier [ 20, 21, 22]. Further, many collaborative encounters between SLTs and teachers are 'one off', time-limited events, involving practitioners who are unfamiliar with one another. As practitioners don't work together in a sustained way, it is difficult for them to develop an awareness of difference, and/or to develop the necessary trust and/or a sense of belonging [ 22, 23].

The two organisational dimensions include; formalization, the degree to which procedures exist that facilitate IPC (thereby clarifying expectations and responsibilities) and governance - leadership that gives direction to, and support for, collaborative working. It is difficult to determine the extent to which IPC is formalised between SLTs and teachers. In parts of the USA where SLTs are employed directly through education services, the school principal oversees the work of the SLT in school. However, it is not clear whether formal procedures exist at a school or a district level that relate specifically to collaborative planning and delivery of supports between SLTs and teachers. In the UK, Ireland and many European countries where SLTs are mainly employed by the health sector, formal cross-agency procedures to support IPC between practitioners are rare [ 24, 25]. In terms of governance, a recent review of speech and language therapy services in the UK showed continued variability in the extent to which school leadership supports IPC between SLT and teachers [ 25]. This is consistent with the findings of an Australian study where the need for leadership/organisational support for IPC has been identified in relation to work by SLTs in schools [ 26].

In summary, if SLTs are to be effective in meeting the needs of children with DLD in school, then they need to plan and deliver support collaboratively with the teacher. However, effective IPC is rare in practice with barriers evident, both at individual and at organisational levels. Our knowledge of how to facilitate IPC in this context is limited which can leave the child with DLD at a disadvantage, both socially and educationally.

In this paper we report the findings of the second of a multi-phased study aimed at developing a conceptual model to guide collaborative practice when working to meet the needs of children with DLD in school. In phase one, we examined the empirical and policy literature across the fields of speech and language therapy and education, searching for a shared understanding about this population that might inform the model. Whilst understanding perspectives in the literature is important, so too are the views of service users about how health services can be improved [ 27]. We therefore wanted to gain an understanding of what it is key stakeholders want from their ideal supports/services to schools.

Aim, purpose and methodological approach

The aim of this study was for parents, SLTs, teachers and children with DLD to design their ideal speech and language therapy service and supports to schools. We were also interested in the degree to which the views of the different groups were aligned (or not) and the implications of this for successful IPC.

Given that the views of these stakeholder groups are relatively under-researched [ 28], we aimed to conduct our qualitative analysis inductively rather than with a pre-existing set of codes in mind in order to generate a rich description of the dataset as a whole. We conducted a thematic analysis at a semantic level, describing what participants said and interpreting this in relation to the previous literature, rather than undertaking a latent analysis, where the researcher is looking for meaning beyond what participants said [ 29].

We followed the 'consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research' guidelines in reporting this study [ 30]. These ensure that sufficient detail is included in the reporting of a qualitative study to enable the reader/reviewer to appraise the quality and rigour of the research.

Methods

Participants

A purposeful sample of participants was recruited to the study. The sample included 29 participants in total: SLTs ( N = 8), teachers ( N = 5), parents ( N = 9) and children with DLD ( N = 7). Each professional was recruited considering their current post, years of experience, gender, and either work setting (SLTs) or type of school in which they work (teachers) for wide representation. Children were recruited according to age, gender and primary diagnosis, as well as different types of speech and language therapy support received and type of school attended. Parents (fathers and mothers) were recruited across Ireland and came from different socio-demographic backgrounds. Collectively, they had experience of accessing the full range of speech and language therapy services and supports currently available for children with DLD in Ireland. Parents and children were recruited via a national support network for parents with DLD using snowballing techniques and practitioners were recruited through professional bodies and established clinical networks via email/phone contact. See Participant details in the Results section.

Topic guides

We used appreciative inquiry when developing the topic guides for the focus groups and interviews. Appreciative inquiry was developed by Cooperrider and Srivastva [ 31] in the field of organisational psychology as a method of generating new ideas about a topic of inquiry. The approach does not start with a pre-defined 'problem' that needs to be fully understood in order to remediate it, but enables those involved in the process to focus on the 'ideal' situation. It has been previously used successfully to document the views of children who have DLD about how they would like their life to be in the future [ 32]. A pilot session with one SLT, one teacher and a parent of a child with speech, language and communication needs was run, to refine the topic guide for the focus groups. The activities were piloted with two children also prior to conducting the interview (see Appendices 1 and 2 for topic guides).

Procedure

Focus groups

Five focus groups were held with practitioners and parents. These included three same-participant groups and two mixed participant groups. It was planned to have two mixed groups with all three participants (SLT, teacher and parents). However as some parents did not wish to attend such mixed groups, only one group had all three participant types; a second was attended by one SLT and one teacher (see Fig. 1 for a summary of groups held, location and participants involved).

Composition of focus groups with speech and language therapists, teachers and parents

All focus groups were facilitated by the first author (ALG), a PhD candidate and qualified SLT who had worked previously with school-aged children with DLD and had undergone additional training in appreciative inquiry. The parents, teachers and children who participated were not known to the SLT prior to the study. Two of the SLTs who took part were known to ALG in a professional capacity from attendance at professional forums.

The participants were informed in writing of the aims of the study and the professional background of the facilitator prior to gaining consent. The facilitator had further phone/ email contact about the study prior to data collection with the participants. At the beginning of each focus group, the facilitator introduced herself, described her prior clinical experience and interest in working in schools, and the aims of the study. The focus groups each lasted between 60 and 70 min.

An observer was present at each session to document any non-verbal interactions and/or actions that occurred between participants and the facilitator, using a standard observation checklist. The observers were PhD candidates currently undertaking qualitative research projects. Following each focus group, a discussion was held between the observer and facilitator about these observations, with the discussions audio-recorded for later integration with the transcripts during analysis.

Semi-structured interviews

Seven semi-structured interviews were held with the children. The children were given the choice to be interviewed alone or with someone else present. Two children were interviewed with a parent present and one with their sibling. The facilitator met the children on two occasions. The purpose of the study was explained at the first occasion; planned activities were demonstrated and the participant(s) became familiar with the facilitator. The interview proper was then conducted at a second visit. The facilitator recorded field notes directly after each interview.

When planning the interviews for children with DLD, consideration was given to issues of participation, trust, consent, power, and control [ 33]. For example, each child was given a red and yellow card at the start of the group. The children knew that they could show the facilitator the yellow card if/when they struggled to understand a task. This signalled to the facilitator the need to adapt or simplify her language. All but one child used this strategy during the interviews. They also knew that they could withdraw their consent to participate at any time, by raising a red card. Draw-and-tell techniques were used with the children. This widely-used technique encourages children to participate by reducing the pressure on a child to communicate verbally [ 34, 35]. The children's comprehension of tasks was assisted by employing augmentative methods of communication. The duration of the interviews was influenced by the communication abilities of the children, varying between 35 and 50 min. All interviews were audio-recorded.

Data transcription and analysis

There were three researchers directly involved in the transcription and analysis (author 1 and two researchers). The interviews were transcribed post hoc by author 1, also the facilitator of the groups. These were checked for accuracy by researcher 2. We followed Braun and Clarke's six-phased guide when analysing the data [ 29]. Data were managed using NVivo 11©, a software package which enables a large amount of coded text to be sorted and tracked and for analytical notes about coding decisions to be stored. This enhanced transparency in analysis.

Coding

A transcription from one of the focus groups was randomly selected by researcher 2 for double-coding. A section of this transcription was coded by each researcher independently, and coding decisions were discussed. When both researchers felt there was, "consistency of meaning" [ 36] - viz., there were few differences evident in relation to the coding decisions - a further section was coded in the same way. This process was undertaken for the transcripts from the semi-structure interviews also. In total, one full transcript from the focus groups and two transcriptions from the interviews were coded in this way. A process of constant comparison was undertaken to generate codes until a final set of codes was identified. Researcher 3 then examined the codes that had been generated from the data and made suggestions about merging some of them. From this, categories were generated which were descriptive, rather than interpretive. Once the codes were organised into categories, key themes were identified. These were presented to co-authors (CAM, PC and AP) on three occasions for refinement. Finally, the themes were re-presented to the participants for checking/comment.

Results

Participant details

Details of the participants involved in the study are set out in Tables 1, 2 and 3 below.

Themes

Four themes were identified in the dataset (see Fig. 2 for an overview of the themes). These related to: (i) the nature of the ideal supports for the child with DLD in school; (ii) the ideal setting; (iii) desired outcomes for the child with DLD and (iv) characteristics of the ideal service.

In Table 4, we present the supporting categories that map the contributions of each stakeholder group to each theme. Examples of direct quotes from the dataset are provided under each theme. In these quotes, we have a used a process of ellipsis to improve readability. This involves replacing fillers/hesitations using a series of dots. Quotes have not been edited beyond this process.

SLTs, teachers, parents and children described ideal supports as being individually-tailored to their/ a child's /needs and interests. These supports were described, not as prescribed procedures, but as supports that are regularly reviewed and refined, according to an individual child's changing needs (Table 5, quote 1).

Tasks in the classroom would be set at the 'right level' of difficulty, with the 'right amount' of scaffolding, so that each child would be challenged (Table 5, quote 2). One of the children described positive feelings when this balance of being challenged but supported was achieved previously with regard to their learning (Table 5, quote 3).

Supports which capitalise on the interests of the individual child were discussed by all - teachers (Table 5, quote 4), parents and children. The children for example, referred to support that helped them in the subjects that interested them (Table 5, quote 5).

A further characteristic related to support which is enabling that is, delivered in a way which makes a child feel that they can succeed. Teachers discussed the idea of a strengths-based approach to support a child in school (Table 5, quote 6). This involved knowing what a child can do and then using this knowledge to facilitate success in tasks that are difficult for them.

Support that provides a child with a set of tools to use in different situations was also discussed. Such tools would enable a child to become more independent in classroom learning (Table 5, quote 7). Parents were clear, however, that in order to get the child to be able to use such tools, they would need to be explicitly taught to do so, in the relevant context by practitioners (Table 5, quote 8 & 9).

Support that enables the child to make informed choices about their learning was discussed by children and parents. One child for example, described having support to make good choices about books; books that would help them to become better at reading (Table 5, quote 10).

A third characteristic related to the importance of providing enriching learning opportunities that are not delivered through language instruction alone. These may occur in the classroom (Table 5, quote 11) as well as outside of school. One parent describes a trip out of school, which they felt was effective in supporting language learning (Table 5, quote 12). One teacher explained the idea of "active learning," which she felt would be an effective approach for planning support for a child with DLD (Table 5, quote 13). Parents discussed the importance of practitioners working across contexts in delivering supports. They described the SLT working in the classroom with the teacher (Table 5, quote 14). Teachers discuss the need for home and school to work together to consolidate learning (Table 5, quote 15).

A final characteristic, described by the children only, related to support that was relevant - that is, informed by the children's experiences of times when they are excluded socially or unable to participate in school. Their ideal supports would provide them with the skills to navigate the ambiguities of social contexts and relationships and which enabled them to contribute in class.

One child, for example, expressed the desire for help to decode the 'unspoken rules' in school, which he described as those that were understood by others -teachers and children- but not by him (Table 5, quote 16). Another child talked about the possibility of having assistance to learn how to enhance her social status among her peers, so that she would be included (Table 5, quote 17).

Of all the stakeholder groups, it was the children who contributed the most to this theme.

Parents and practitioners described their ideal classroom setting as sentient;-that is, one where there was a culture of listening and noticing. In their ideal classroom all those involved with the child with DLD would make the 'effort' to listen to them (Table 6, quote 1). If the child was not engaged in learning, this would also be noticed, and the child would be encouraged to do so (Table 6, quote 2).

The children spent most of their time talking about their ideal setting. They described it as one, which is safe, inclusive and emancipatory. They described a classroom in which they felt safe to take risks with their learning and talking, without fear of negative exposure (Table 6, quote 3). There would be clear and explicit expectations (aka rules) about how students treat each other in this classroom (positively, and with respect for each other) and there would be consistent responses from teachers to reinforce these values (Table 6 quote 4). This characteristic was discussed when the children recounted experiences of being bullied and/or where they reported feeling exposed and humiliated in a class.

All children described a setting which was inclusive. While parents and practitioners focussed on the importance of the child with DLD being accepted (despite their differences) by the rest of the children in their peer group (Table 6 quote 5), the children described a classroom where every child is seen as different (Table 6 quote 6). In the children's ideal setting, difference would be openly discussed and celebrated as a positive resource (Table 6 quote 7) and the children would like each other because of their differences, rather than despite them (Table 6 quotes 8).

A final characteristic of their ideal setting, discussed by the children, related to power and control. Their ideal setting was one where the children had influence in decisions (Table 6 quote 9), and where they had more control over speaking in the class (Table 6, quote 10).

All of the children talked about how language is used and by whom, in the classroom. In their ideal classroom, they would be given the space to use language for a variety of purposes rather than being restricted to answering the teacher's questions. This was in the context of recounting feelings of humiliation due to being unable to provide the right information requested by the teacher, in front of their peers (Table 6 quote 11). In their ideal classroom, children would have more control over how language can be used and more opportunities to use language to think (Table 6 quote 12). The children were clear that they need to be given more chance to practise talking, for their language to improve.

All the stakeholder groups mentioned the ability to connect with others and to maintain good quality friendships as a priority skill for children with DLD to learn. Whilst practitioners and parents discussed the outcome of 'having a friend' in broad terms (Table 7, quote 1 & 2), the children described the skills they need to be able to achieve this, specific to the context of the nature of social relationships that are formed and maintained in school. For example, one child discussed needing to learn the language of their peers as a 'way in' (Table 7, quote 3).

All stakeholders stated that being able to participate in class was an important outcome but there were diffe rences in perspective about the meaning of participation. For teachers and SLTs, successful participation was described as the child with DLD being able to demonstrate the required knowledge in 'typical,' tightly-controlled classroom interactions. They repeatedly described a child with DLD with their hand up, willing and being able to answer a teacher's question (Table 7, quote 4).

The children, by contrast, wanted to be able to participate, not to demonstrate knowledge but rather to contribute to the development of ideas (Table 7, quote 5). For the children, participation was discussed as a means by which they could learn through language.

Another outcome, described by both parents and children, was the ability to understand or, more specifically, to make inferences about people and social situations (Table 7, quote 6). One child stated that, if they were a super-hero, their special power would be 'to be able read people's minds' (Table 7, quote 7). Another child discussed their wish to be able to 'read' other children and to know how to respond in a suitable way (Table 7, quote 8).

Three children said they wanted to understand the 'unwritten rules' in school, which they struggled to comprehend. They discussed this outcome in the context of describing how their current inability to do so, resulted in their being excluded from the school community.

A further outcome related to a child with DLD being able to independently manage their needs in school. All stakeholders discussed the importance of self-management, although they had differing views about the purpose of having such skills. Parents and professionals talked about self-management in the classroom only. They wanted a child with DLD to be able to use strategies to manage their learning and language needs. They discussed the importance of knowing when to seek support (Table 7, quote 9 and being able to regulate feelings and behaviour in readiness for learning (Table 7, quote 10).

SLTs, in particular, emphasised the importance of a child being aware of their comprehension difficulties in the classroom and being able to signal to the teacher when they needed help in understanding (Table 7, quote 11).

The children wanted strategies to manage complex/nuanced issues related to navigating ethical dilemmas and peer relations. They also talked about the need for strategies that would help them to 'survive' and 'stay safe' in the context of their relationships with peers. For example, one child described developing an outer personality (which was contradictory to how they felt inside), to avoid being a target of bullying (Table 7, quote 12).

A final outcome, mainly discussed by parents, related to children with DLD 'having a voice.' They wanted the child with DLD to be able to stand up for her/himself (Table 7, quote 13) and to speak up when they encountered injustice (Table 7, quote 14). Parents wanted their children with DLD to be able to influence those around them in decisions, which impacted on their lives (Table 7, quote 15).

Parents and practitioners described a service, which should be, first and foremost, 'needs-led'. In other words, all of the service and resource decisions (who is involved with the child and family, for how long, and in what way) would be underpinned by one agenda - the child needs (Table 8, quote 1) and to deliver these (Table 8, quote 2). This is in contrast with parent's perceptions of current speech and language therapy services, which they perceived to focus on limiting the child's access to resources.

The ideal service, according to parents and practitioners, considers the classroom environment when determining the needs of the child. The focus of interventions and the outcomes which are measured by such a service are not just related to clinical outcomes, but also to social interaction (Table 8, quote 3 & 4). Parents, in particular, highlighted that the ideal service would address the barriers the child faces in school because of their language difficulties.

The ideal service, according to the parents, offers continuity of care as it is also informed about the persistent nature of a language disorder, and aware that it is a lifelong condition (Table 8, quote 5). They discussed the negative consequences for a child and family of being moved, 'in and out' of different services, which they had experienced previously.

A second characteristic was that an ideal service would have, at its core, an ethic of care for the service users as well as for those who deliver the service. When representing this service on paper, parents, SLTs and teachers frequently drew arms and/or a heart around a child to emphasise that they would be 'cared for' within an ideal Speech and language therapy service (Table 8, quote 6 &7).

A third characteristic related to the collaborative nature of the ideal service. Collaboration was described as involving two key elements; equal partnerships and a sharing of responsibility.

Equal partnerships were described as those where parents and their children with DLD were listened to; where their opinions counted (Table 8, quote 8 & 9). Parents and practitioners described how decision-making about supports would be shared between the parent(s), practitioners and the child (Table 8 quote 10), rather than (as at present) being controlled by the professional(s) alone.

A sharing of responsibility in meeting the needs of the child with DLD in school by all those involved was discussed by all stakeholders.

Parents discussed it in the context of recounting feelings of exhaustion from being left to co-ordinate (and fight for) supports for their child on their own (Table 7 quote 11). Teachers and SLTs discussed it in recounting strong feelings of frustration about current service models where children with DLD were described as falling through the gaps.

The stakeholders differed in their views of the role of the SLT in their ideal service. The teachers were very clear that they wanted the SLT physically present and working in the classroom, whereas the SLTs positioned themselves more as 'advisors.'

In one group, when the SLT and teacher drew a picture of their ideal service and those involved, the teacher insisted that the SLT be moved to the "inner" circle (Table 8, quote 12). (where the group had positioned the teacher and child) from an outer one, where the SLT had initially placed herself. The teacher made a clear distinction between Speech and language therapy services where the therapist was minimally involved in a 'consultative' role - and their ideal service, where the SLT as a true collaborator 'on the ground.'

The parent's views were aligned with those of the teachers in how responsibility for their child could be shared in their ideal service. They also wanted the SLT to be in the school and working in the classroom (Table 8, quote 13). Frustration was expressed by parents and teachers at current ways of working, where parents stated that SLTs 'passed on their responsibility' for a child's language development to school staff.

A final characteristic described by both parents and practitioners related to the values of the ideal organisation in which the service sits. An SLT described an organisation in which the clinical expertise of practitioners is recognised and where they are given the authority to make decisions and to act in the best interest of the child (Table 8, quote 14).

In this ideal organisation, those providing the service can respond easily and quickly to the needs of the service users, as well as to external influences, such as new research findings and/or policy changes (Table 8, quote 15 & 16).

This ideal organisation is focused on relationships between people and strengthening these. Stakeholders were clear that supporting strong relationships across sectors is required if practitioners are to make collaborative decisions, in the best interest of the child. In this ideal service, practitioners would be supported to work beyond the traditional boundaries of an SLT in a health clinic. This would allow the practitioner to meet the needs of the child in the context of their everyday life in school (Table 8, quote 17 & 18).

Discussion

The aim of this study was to characterise the views of multiple groups of stakeholders when asked to describe their ideal speech and language therapy service for children with DLD in school. We identified convergent and divergent views, within and across the participant groups, about services and supports. We discuss the implications of our findings with reference to the four elements of IPC as described by D'Amour- shared goals and vision; internalization; formalization; and governance [ 19].

The goals of the children differed from those of the practitioners. They were primarily concerned with their social inclusion and participation in school, consistent with previous studies [ 37, 38]. They described many of the barriers that they faced as a result of their language difficulties on a daily basis; barriers such as the different registers of language used by peers, the 'hidden curriculum' through which values, norms and rules in school are tacitly transmitted, and the restrictive rules about how language can be used in the classroom.

The priority goals of the children were to facilitate their inclusion, participation and achievement. This goal cannot be achieved solely by equipping them with the necessary languages skills and tools, but also requires environmental barriers to be addressed. They talked, for example, of support that would help them to learn to speak the language of their peers, and those supports which would help them to understand the implicit rules of the school, as well as the need to create opportunities for them to use language in class for thinking. In contrast, the main goal of supports from the point of view of the practitioners was to improve the language skills of the child. They did not discuss the ways in which the classroom and/or school setting might enable or disable a child with DLD.

There were also differences between the children and practitioners in terms of their vision of the ideal classroom and school. The children provided a clear picture of their ideal classroom setting as one which is inclusive. In this inclusive setting, all children were acknowledged to be different, diversity was celebrated, and children were liked because of their differences, rather than despite them. The children also described their ideal classroom setting as one where they were given the autonomy to make choices about their learning and where they were enabled to participate. For them, participation meant being able to contribute to the co-production of ideas. They described ways in which practices in the classroom could be adapted to enable them to do so, such as having a less restrictive classroom discourse. While practitioners did refer to such principles as inclusion, autonomy and participation, they struggled to create a vision of an inclusive classroom and school. For example, having stated the importance of an inclusive setting, they went on to describe their ideal classroom as one in which the child with DLD (who is different to the other children) is successfully integrated;-that is, accepted despite their differences. Similarly, while acknowledging the importance of the child with DLD having autonomy in principle, they did not discuss ways of adapting the classroom and/or teaching so that the child could actually exercise choice. Likewise, whilst discussing the importance of a child being able to participate in school, practitioners did not describe ways in which classroom discourse might be adapted in order to facilitate this. These findings suggest, consistent with the literature, that practitioners may not have a clear understanding of how inclusive principles might be enacted [ 39].

The differences relating to the goals and vision might be due to where the different stakeholder groups ' rest their gaze.' According to Henderson, cited in Graham [ 40], the cause for failing to learn certain skills can be understood in different ways; - viz, due to the 'deficient child' or the 'deficient teacher' [p.10]. Practitioners in this study focused mainly on how support and services can improve the skills of the 'deficient child', whereas the children were primarily concerned with the ways in which the environment/ practices is deficient and could be adapted to facilitate their participation and inclusion in school. These stakeholders appear to have a different understanding of both 'the problem' and 'the solution' in relation to how best children's language needs can be met in school.

Tangen [ 41] offers an explanation for the differing perspectives we identified in this study. She discusses the concept of 'insider' knowledge - that which can be gained only through direct experience. The children with DLD in this study brought their unique insider knowledge about the barriers they face in school as a result of their difficulties; yet children with DLD are not routinely included in decisions made about supports to be delivered to them in school [ 42]. The findings of this study show that omitting to include the perspective of the child may result in barriers to their participation and achievement and/or potentially discriminatory practices to remain unchecked.

Professional differences have been discussed in the literature as a barrier to collaboration between SLTs and teachers [ 19, 20, 21], as well as between professionals and parents [ 43]. Including the child in decision-making would add further differences in perspective, and power issues related to the status of the child relative to the adults. This requires very careful consideration about how such differences could be acknowledged and managed;- that is, how such differences could be 'internalised.'

It is important to highlight the agreement we found between all stakeholders about the nature of the ideal supports. All participants described supports which are individually-tailored, enabling and varied. These views are consistent with those of parents reported by Roulstone [ 28] and of teachers, reported by Dockrell et al. [ 44] when describing speech and language therapy services in the UK. The importance of strategies that enable a child to become a more independent learner has also been previously documented [ 32, 45]. Such agreement has positive implications for the collaborative process, provided that a set of shared goals and a collective vision can be agreed and differences are managed.

Parents and practitioners were closely aligned in their views when describing their ideal service. They discussed a service in which the quality of relationships is central and where there is an ethic of caring. They characterised their ideal service as a series of collaborative networks which include the service user (parent and child) and service providers (SLTs and teachers). They described collaborative relationships as those in which there is equality and shared responsibility. Shared responsibility, for these stakeholders, meant everyone having a role not just in the planning but in the delivery supports in school and in the classroom.

Formalization of processes and procedures by setting up and strengthening such networks between SLTs, teachers and stakeholders may be a way of improving the quality and effectiveness of collaborative services to schools. Several case studies have been reported that describe different methods of strengthening such networks and the role of leadership in doing so [ 46].

Parents and practitioners also describe a service, which is responsive, flexible and innovative. These characteristics point to a particular organisational 'culture' or set of values, referred to in the literature as 'adhocratic'. This culture, according to Ovseiko et al. [ 47] promotes adaptability and risk-taking at the 'ground' level, and is distinguished from a 'bureaucratic' one where decisions are made at the 'top,' to which workers must adhere.

Historically, attempts at enhancing collaboration between speech and language therapy services and schools have focused on reducing only the structural barriers, without considering cultural factors. In terms of governance then, leadership which promotes such a culture may be warranted and there are tools such as the 'Competing Values Framework,' piloted across a wide range of organisational contexts, which could guide SLT managers and school principals in doing this [ 48].

In summary, the findings of this study show the benefits, not just of including diverse groups of stakeholders in health services research to inform service improvement but also of including these different perspectives in an everyday capacity, when planning the delivery of speech and language therapy supports in school. Parents.

Implications for policy

We propose that a key policy implication of the study across health and education is to reinforce the status of the child as a 'being' in their own right. This is necessary so that including the child/young person in decisions is a requirement rather than desirable/conditional as is currently the case [ 49, 50]. This would also move the discourse on from whether or not children should be included, to how this can be achieved.

A further policy implication is to provide clear guidance around issues of 'voice'. Whilst 'giving voice'; − that is, documenting the views of children with DLD has become an increasing focus of speech and language therapy research in the last 10 years [ 32, 37, 38, 51, 52], we know that children with DLD currently have little genuine 'influence' in decisions about the services and supports they receive [ 42]. Lundy proposes a framework which might guide policy makers in this task. She draws a distinction between giving 'voice', 'space', 'audience', and 'influence' and argues that all four are necessary if we are to genuinely include children in decisions that affect their lives [ 49].

Implications for practice

In addition to the suggested policy changes above, we propose that practitioners need to learn the skills necessary to ' listen' to children with DLD. Listening, as defined by Clark [ 53], is not the same as extracting information from the child about an adult-led issue. Different methods of listening have been piloted in research with children with communication previously, such as the use of multiple conversations and multi-modal prompting systems [ 38, 51]. Practitioners need to be given the opportunity to learn about these techniques, understand their rationale and to use them as part of their everyday interactions with children.

Giving the child genuine 'influence' may also require practitioners to be open to thinking and/or working in new ways. This is professionally challenging, requiring enhanced clinical reasoning and problem solving skills, a strong sense of self-efficacy and professional autonomy. In planning SLT services, practitioners would need to be supported to work in such a responsive way.

Implications for research

The majority of studies in the field of speech and language therapy are focused on establishing the efficacy of procedures to improve the language skills of the child. The views of the children in this study highlight the need for research to guide SLTs and teachers when considering ways of optimising classroom discourse to enable children with DLD to learn. Whilst there is guidance available to ensure a classroom is 'communication friendly' [ 52], there is no coherent theoretical framework currently being applied within the field of speech and language therapy that we know of, which enables us to systematically describe and test out ways of adjusting the rules of class talk for children/young people with DLD. An implication for research, then, is the need to consider different methodologies such as sociological approaches to the study of the classroom.

Finally, it is important to add that the desired services and supports described by these stakeholders are in stark contrast to many of the limited models of speech and language therapy support to schools. For many SLTs, ongoing, carefully-planned dialogue (including the child) with the aim of co-configuring individualised supports, delivered in a way which ensures the child's inclusion and participation is simply not possible. The findings highlight the need to continue to increase awareness about DLD and to lobby for the necessary resources for SLTs to be able to work in a meaningful way in schools.

Limitations of the study

This is a descriptive study involving the views of a small number of stakeholders. The findings cannot be said to represent the views of teachers, SLTs, parents or children with DLD in general. Instead, we provide a rich description of the ideal service and supports as described by a group of individuals, carefully chosen because of their particular knowledge and experience in relation to SLT services and supports, in order for us to develop our understanding of collaboration in this context and to propose ways in which it might be facilitated.

Summary and next steps

We engaged multiple stakeholders in the design of their ideal speech and language therapy service and supports to schools. We found important differences in perspective between the stakeholder groups. Most striking were the unique insights the children brought to the process. They described in detail the many barriers to their achievement, participation and inclusion in school. Further, they were able to describe many practical ways in which these barriers could be addressed and their needs met in an inclusive way;-that is, without setting them apart from their peers.

Up until now, studies of 'collaboration' have been limited to understanding what happens between the professionals. We advocate the need, based on our findings, to reframe the process so that the child is given influence in decisions about support in school. In the next phase of our study, we aim to establish consensus about premises that might underpin a model to guide this inclusive approach to collaboration.

Abbreviations

DLD:

Developmental language disorder

IPC:

Inter-professional collaboration

SLT:

Speech and language therapist

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the parents, children, SLTs, and teachers who participated in the study and who provided feedback on the analysis. We would also like to thank Anne O Connor, Áine Kearns and Kathy O Sullivan for their assistance in piloting the focus groups, Molly Manning and Hannah Grove for acting as observers, Noreen Murphy for double-coding and, Katie Robinson for her assistance in generating the themes.

Funding

ALG is a full time PhD scholar on a structured PhD programme in Health Service Research and Population Health, funded by the Health Research Board (SPHeRE/2013/1), Ireland. Funding covers postgraduate fees and a stipend for 4 years.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable. Ethics approval for the study requires that data is accessible only to the researchers.

Author information

Affiliations

School of Allied Health, Faculty of Education & Health Sciences, University of Limerick, Limerick, V94 T9PX, Ireland

A. L. Gallagher, CA. Murphy & A. Perry

School of Education, Faculty of Education & Health Sciences, University of Limerick, Limerick, V94 T9PX, Ireland

P. F. Conway

Contributions

ALG drafted the manuscript. CAM, PFC and AP have commented on earlier drafts of the manuscript. ALG, CAM, AP and PFC all contributed to the design of the main study. ALG facilitated the focus groups and interviews and conducted the analysis. CAM, PFC and AP all contributed to the refinement of the themes. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. L. Gallagher.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical approval was granted a priori for this study by the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences' Human Research Ethics Committee, at the University of Limerick (ref: 2016_12_15_EHS). Written consent was obtained from the participants in the study.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Topic guide (parents and professionals)

Discovery

Question 1:

Can you think for a minute about a time when you accessed a service and it was really, really brilliant. Jot down some details: who was there, what was happening, how you felt, what made it so brilliant. Tell the group all about it? Give us as much detail as you can.

Dream

Question 2:

Now I want to introduce someone to you (prop). His name is Sean. He is 11 years old. He has difficulty understanding instructions, his reading and spelling is poor and he finds friendships hard. It is hard to make out what he is telling you at times. If you had three wishes for Sean in school, what would they be?

Question 3:

Everything you have ever imagined for Sean has come true. I want you to imagine you are looking in the window of the school/classroom. Tell me what you see. Give us as much detail as you can.

Design

Question 4:

Take a minute to look at the flip charts / post-its / your notes/ scribbles, the ideas that we have shared today. Now you need to try to draw a picture of the best speech and language therapy service to school ever. You can use shapes, symbols whatever works for you. You need to draw it rather than use words.

Appendix 2

Topic guide (children)

We are going to do three things today.

(Place symbols in order, on desk. Refer to symbol at the start of each activity)

Remember (props: story sequence cards)

So first, I'd like you to remember. Can you think of the best day EVER at school? Ok, here is some paper and pens. Can you draw/ write about some things that happened on this day? Here are somethings reminders of things to think about when telling a story (use props: 'colourful semantics' cards - what, who, where, when, how feel). Can you tell me about this day?

Dream (props: 3 blank clouds)

Now I am going to give you three wishes about school. Here are your wishes. You can draw on them or write them or talk about them. It is your choice. Can you tell me about your wishes?

Design (props- window, lego man/woman, classroom objects) Now, all your wishes have come true. You are in the best school ever, and all of your wishes have come true. Can you draw one big picture of this school and classroom? (flipchart) You can add things to the classroom. I have some things here that you might find in a classroom you can use or make up your own things?

Possible prompts to ask during or end: (Tell me about the children in this classroom? What are they like? Tell me what is happening? How are they feeling? What are you doing in this classroom? How do you feel in this classroom?)

Is there anything else about the best school ever that you can tell me?

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Engaging multiple stakeholders to improve speech and language therapy services in schools: an appreciative inquiry-based study - BMC Health Services Research

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Background Effective collaboration between speech and language therapists (SLTs) and teachers is essential in meeting the needs of children with developmental language disorders in school, but it is difficult to achieve. Currently, many children receive inadequate speech and language therapy services and/or support in school.

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Key strategies to support DLD - from Moor House School and College

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Poster from Moor House School and College

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@ICANcharity
https://ican.org.uk/

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Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives

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Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives

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We are Speech and Language UK - we want every child to face the future with confidence. For 1.7 million children in the UK, learning to talk and understand words feel like an impossible hurdle.

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Moor House School and College DLD Day 2021

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Moor House School and College DLD Day 2021

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Student presentation about Developmental Language Disorder

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Article shared via Al Gallagher @aoifelilyg1 as part of International Developmental Language Disorder Day 2021.

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How many times over the last few months have you struggled to follow a conversation? Have you found yourself desperately focusing on someone's eyes for clues as to how they are feeling or the intention behind their words? Do you miss the loose connections that are made on a daily basis by chatting with others, so integral to the way we go about our daily business here in Ireland? A simple conversation, something that that most of us took for granted, has now become effortful and frustrating.

Findings from studies of the impact of Covid suggest that people are feeling lonely and isolated, even depressed due to the decrease in human interaction and the disruptions to communication. Not surprising really, given that we are inherently social creatures and the need to feel human connection is fundamental to our mental and physical health.

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From Boys Town National Research Hospital, living with Developmental Language Disorder
For most of us (hopefully) the loss of connection with others will be temporary, but what if communication has been effortful and frustrating all of your life? Approximately 70,000 children and young people have a relatively unknown condition called Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) where they struggle to connect with others. Difficulties with comprehension, expressing thoughts and ideas and reading others intentions are the norm. Poor language means that the school years can be very challenging, with increased risk of literacy difficulties and struggles with exams. Adolescents with DLD are three times more likely to suffer from depression.

Ahead of DLD International Awareness day, I believe that Covid has created a unique opportunity for us to harness positive societal change for children and young people with DLD. It has drawn our attention to the importance of communication as a means of feeling connected with others in a way that no research paper can. An awareness of what it is like not to be able to communicate is now a shared lived experience for all. This is a watershed moment for us to make changes in order to create a more inclusive society, a society where we are all invested in making communication work.

By making simple adaptations to our communication, we can reduce many of the barriers faced by children and young people with DLD.

Simple strategies that have been found to be helpful to support communication include:

· Making sure you have a person's attention before you talk

· Facing the person directly, making sure nothing is blocking their view of you

· Giving extra time for others to respond

· Using extra gestures alongside your words

· Using your body language in a more exaggerated way than normal to get your message across

· Stopping to check the other person is understanding

· Letting the person know you will give them the time needed to get their message across

· Getting creative by carrying a pen and paper, drawing a picture or writing ideas down to support the conversation

These simple strategies such as these can make all the difference. By the way, if you are out and about on October 16th, you may spot some key landmarks (universities, government buildings, bridges, castles) across Ireland lighting up in purple and yellow for DLD International Awareness day. Take the time to enjoy the beautiful lights and to make a pledge to support communication for all.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

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What you need to know about Developmental Language Disorder

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How many times over the last few months have you struggled to follow a conversation? Have you found yourself desperately focusing on someone's eyes for clues as to how they are feeling or the intention behind their words?

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Banter Speech & Language | Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

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Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

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Developmental Language Disorder: A free guide for families | Banter Speech & Language

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Developmental Language Disorder ('DLD') is common. But it is not well understood. It's hard to find evidence-based information that is easy to read. We've written a lot about DLD. We put together this 64-article guide for children, adolescents, adults and families affected by DLD.

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A sketchnote of information about DLD identification from the 1st International Developmental Research Conference 2021 #IDLDRC

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CForwood Sketchnote Identification IDLDRC 2021

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A sketchnote of information about oral narrative from the 1st International Developmental Research Conference 2021 #IDLDRC

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CForwood Sketchnote Oral Narrative IDLDRC 2021

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A sketchnote of information from presentations focusing on vocabulary at the 1st International Developmental Language Disorder Research Conference 2021 #IDLDRC

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CForwood Sketchnote All about Words IDLDRC 2021

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From research to the clinic: understanding and using intervention evidence

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From research to the clinic: understanding and using intervention evidence

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A sketchnote of information from Associate Professor Suze Leitão's keynote at the 1st International Developmental Language Disorder Research Conference 2021 #IDLDRC

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CForwood Sketchnote Suze Leitão Key note et al IDLDRC 2021

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DLD: Screening, diagnosis, intervention frameworks and literacy outcomes

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DLD: Screening, diagnosis, intervention frameworks and literacy outcomes

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A sketchnote of information from Professor Tiffany Hogan's keynote at the 1st International Developmental Language Disorder Research Conference 2021 #IDLDRC

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CForwood Sketchnote Tiffany P Hogan IDLDRC Keynote 2021

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A sketchnote of information about DLD in Education from the 1st International Developmental Language Disorder Research Conference 2021 #IDLDRC

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CForwood Sketchnote DLD in Education IDLDRC 2021

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A sketchnote of information from presentations about adolescence at the 1st International Developmental Language Disorder Research Conference 2021 #IDLDRC

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CForwood Sketchnote DLD in Adolescence IDLDRC 2021

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Why language matters for social, emotional and behavioural wellbeing

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Why language matters for social, emotional and behavioural wellbeing

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A sketchnote of information from Professor Courtenay Norbury's keynote at the 1st International Developmental Language Disorder Research Conference 2021 #IDLDRC

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CForwood Sketchnote Courtenay Norbury Keynote IDLDRC 2021

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Lily Farrington's Amazing Developmental Language Disorder Animation

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Engage with Developmental Language Disorder (E-DLD) Project

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Engage with Developmental Language Disorder (E-DLD) Project

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The E-DLD project links researchers with those affected by Developmental Language Disorder, childhood language disorder or communication impairment.

The E-DLD team invites individuals with DLD and their families to sign up to our newsletter and yearly survey.

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Home | Engage with Developmental Language Disorder

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A Family Guide to Understanding a Diagnosis of DLD

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A Family Guide to Understanding a Diagnosis of DLD

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What is DLD?

What causes DLD?

What can you do to support your family member with DLD?

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If your family has recently received a DLD diagnosis and you are looking for more information on what that means you've come to the right place! In this brief 30 minute online module Shaun Ziegenfusz, Co-Founder of The DLD Project and expert speech pathologist, will answer three main questions:

What is DLD?

What causes DLD?

What can you do to support your family member with DLD?

To celebrate DLD Awareness Day 2020 we will be making this online module FREE for the month of October. Please feel free to share this great resource widely so we can support as many families as possible.

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A Family Guide to Understanding a Diagnosis of DLD - The DLD Project

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If your family has recently received a DLD diagnosis and you are looking for more information on what that means you've come to the right place! In this brief 30 minute online module Shaun Ziegenfusz, Co-Founder of The DLD Project and expert speech pathologist, will answer three main questions: What is DLD?

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Don't be scared to ask for help - a parent's advice

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Don't be scared to ask for help - a parent's advice

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Short article with link to a podcast with Jackie, a parent of a student at Moor House School and College

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Parents should follow their instincts and not be afraid to ask for help according to Moor House parent Jackie Thurtle, who offers a parents' perspective on Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in the latest Moor House Podcast.

Speaking ahead of DLD Awareness Day this Friday (16 th October) Jackie, whose son Joseph, 17, has been at Moor House since the age of 8, spoke candidly about her experiences including how it felt to receive the diagnosis, the challenges faced along the way and what advice she would offer other parents.

"We didn't really appreciate what was before us" she says, reflecting on Joseph's frustrations with speech at an early age.

"We really had no idea what DLD was. He started to have seizures around the age of 4 which turned out to be a silver lining as that needed investigation and through that, we discovered a Speech and Language Disorder.

"As a parent I don't think any diagnosis is particularly welcomed. It wasn't easy emotionally, but we had a very helpful GP who referred us to Evelina Hospital where we met a fantastic multi-disciplinary team.

"The best advice we were given was by a Speech & Language Therapist at Evelina, an awesome man who we respected enormously. He asked if we'd ever heard of Moor House? That was a wonderful piece of information."

On her advice to other parents Jackie says: "Take every piece of help that's offered. The help is for your child and it's no reflection on you.

"I think the other thing to bear in mind is that it's not their fault and don't apologise for them.

"There are situations I've found myself in public where I've wept because he hasn't been accepted.

"People will be understanding if they can be, other won't. I don't apologise for anything he does because he is him and I've accepted that. Keep their spirits and sense of worth at the forefront of what you do.

"Reserve your strength, there will be lots of battles, but keep loving and holding each other. A lot of my friends ask me 'how have you got a child who wants to cuddle you still'. Not many 17 year-olds want their Mum but he does, so that's a huge silver lining for me."
You can listen to the full interview with Jackie on the latest Moor House Podcast, available below.
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Don't be scared to ask for help: A parents view on DLD

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Parents should follow their instincts and not be afraid to ask for help according to Moor House parent Jackie Thurtle, who offers a parents' perspective on Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in the latest Moor House Podcast.

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In every Australian classroom, two children are likely to have developmental language disorder (DLD). October 16 marks International Developmental Language Disorder Awareness Day, which recognises the vital importance of language for social and emotional development and the people affected by DLD.

What is developmental language disorder?

Developmental language disorder is a life-long condition affecting language development that is characterised by difficulties with understanding and/or using spoken language that cannot be explained by another known health condition.

This neurodevelopmental condition used to be called 'specific language impairment (SLI)'. However, the name was changed in 2017 after a group of international experts reached an agreement about how to identify childhood language impairments.

The term 'language disorder' was chosen for referring to language difficulties that impact a child's ability to communicate, learn and participate in daily life. DLD is a subset of this group of disorders.

Children with DLD can have difficulty understanding what people are saying to them, and with expressing their needs, thoughts and feelings through spoken language.

The cause of DLD is not known, although it is probably linked to interacting genetic and environmental factors rather than having a single cause.

How common is DLD?

The exact incidence of DLD isn't known. However, recent research shows that, on average, two students in every class of 30 (or about 7.5 percent) will be affected by DLD at a level severe enough to affect their academic progress.

Could my child have DLD?

Your child may be diagnosed with DLD if they have difficulty with talking and/or understanding language that impacts everyday life, such as their ability to communicate with family and peers or participate in home and community life.

Children with DLD have language issues that persist past the developmentally appropriate age. These include:

Incorrect grammar - such as saying 'he runned' instead of 'he ran'.

Having a limited vocabulary - children with DLD may use fewer words than their peers and take longer to learn new words.

Difficulty understanding instructions and stories in the classroom and peers in social settings.

Trouble using language in social situations - such as difficulty taking turns in a conversation or finding the right words to express their ideas and feelings.

Difficulties using correct speech sounds - such as saying 'lellow' for 'yellow'.

Because learning mainly happens through language, DLD can also impact your child's schooling and ability to fulfil their academic potential.

According to the Queensland University of Technology's Student Engagement, Learning and Behaviour Research Group, students with DLD often have difficulty:

using complete or complex sentences

linking their ideas and creating cohesive texts

retelling a story or event

finding the word they want to say or write to explain something

learning new words in various subject areas

spelling and reading, and

engaging in social interactions.

DLD can also lead to social isolation because it can be harder for your child to participate in conversations and activities with their peers. This may also make your child more vulnerable to bullying.

A DLD diagnosis may be missed as it can sometimes be misinterpreted as poor behaviour or inattention. Because they want so much to fit in at school, students may actively mask their language difficulties. For example, they may display behaviours such as disruption and disengagement to draw attention away from their language issues.

As a lifelong condition, DLD also affects adults and may be linked with unemployment and economic disadvantage.

How is DLD diagnosed?

A diagnosis of DLD will involve an assessment with a speech-language pathologist, such as our experienced therapists here at Growing Early Minds. Other professionals, such as your child's GP, paediatrician and educators, may also be involved.

The diagnosis will include ruling out other potential causes for your child's language difficulties, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), sensory-neural hearing loss or a genetic condition such as Down syndrome.

For a diagnosis of DLD to be made, your child must have significant language deficits relative to expectations for their age, which cause problems with communication or learning in everyday life and are unlikely to resolve by age five.

How is DLD managed?

While there is no cure, support is available to help children with DLD develop skills and strategies to achieve their potential.

Your speech-language pathologist will conduct an assessment which includes taking a history of your child's development and noting any health concerns. They will explore your child's communication skills, looking for strengths as well as challenges. Consideration will be made of your family situation and you and your child's goals.

Next, in consultation with you, your speech-language pathologist will create a plan for achieving those goals.

This will include a tailored speech therapy program, along with strategies to build your capacity to support your child's language development. If your child is at school, it may also include working with teachers on strategies to support your child in the classroom.

Your speech-language pathologist will monitor your child's progress and adjust the program as needed to suit changing goals and developmental stages.
Our dedicated speech-language pathologists at Growing Early Minds are all certified practising members of Find out more on our speech language pathology page, get in touch on 1800 436 436 or message us at support@growingearlyminds.org.au. Speech Pathology Australia. They are experienced in working with children who have complex needs, developmental delay or disability (including autism) and who have experienced trauma.
References

https://research.qut.edu.au/selb/explainer-what-is-developmental-language-disorder/

https://www.rcslt.org/speech-and-language-therapy/clinical-information/developmental-language-disorder#

https://www.mcri.edu.au/sites/default/files/media/documents/cres/cre-cl_policy_brief_2_dld_public_health.pdf

https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/news-and-events/2019/10/17/raising-awareness-of-developmental-language-disorders.html

https://ahha.asn.au/system/files/docs/publications/evidence_brief_no_20._developmental_language_disorder.pdf

https://www.acamh.org/topic/developmental-language-disorder/

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Developmental Language Disorder | Growing Early Minds

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In every Australian classroom, two children are likely to have developmental language disorder (DLD). October 16 marks International Developmental Language Disorder Awareness Day, which recognises the vital importance of language for social and emotional development and the people affected by DLD.

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Updated evidence based guide for parents affected by DLD - thanks to Banter Speech

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Banter Speech & Language | Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

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Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Developmental Language Disorder: A free guide for families | Banter Speech & Language

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Developmental Language Disorder ('DLD') is common. But it is not well understood. It's hard to find evidence-based information that is easy to read. We've written a lot about DLD. We put together this 64-article guide for children, adolescents, adults and families affected by DLD.

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Ellen's story

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Parent of a child with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) - DLDandMe.org

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Living With Developmental Language Disorder

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Living With Developmental Language Disorder

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BoysTown Hospital

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Living with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) - DLDandMe.org

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Moor House School and College

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An animated narration of Jen's experience with DLD.

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An animated video from Dorset Health

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Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust

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Life as an adult with Developmental Language Disorder

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Life as an adult with Developmental Language Disorder

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Adults with DLD narrate this beautifully crafted animation about Developmental Language Disorder, its impact on adults, what helps and what they need

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Here are some of the great people to follow on Twitter/X #DevLangDis

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Here are some of the great people to follow on Twitter/X #DevLangDis

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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee
Courtney Norbury @lilaccourt
Susan Ebbels @SusanEbbels
Pamela Snow @PamelaSnow2
Tanya Serry @tserry2504
Stephen Parsons @WordAware
Julia Starling @JuliaStarling4
Natalie Munro @NatalieMunro3
Nathaniel Swain @NathanielRSwain
Lisa Archibald @larchiba6
Susan Rvachew @ProfRvach
Emina McLean @EminaMcLean
Becky Clarke @BeckyClark22
Haley Tancredi @HaleyTanc
Suze Leitao @Suze_Freogirl
Robert Wells @RobertPWells
Charlotte Forwood @talkinged19
Emily May Jackson @EmilyMayJackson
David Kinnane @speechbloke
Kathryn Thorburn @Lang_LearnSP
Karla McGregor @mcgregor_karla
Emily Dawes @EmilyDawesSLP
Laura Glisson @LauraGlisson
Shaun Ziegenfusz @ShaunZiegenfusz
Victoria Joffe @vjoffe
Billie Lowe @HilaryLowe2
Josephine Wallinger @jowallinger
Patricia Eadie @paeadie
Tim Kittel@TimothyKittel
Tiffany Hogan @tiffanyphogan
Lizz Hill @LizzHillSP
Tina Kilpatrick @tinakilpatrick1
Pascale Dubois @PascaleDubois11
Trish Hicken @TrishHicken
Marie-Pier Gingras @GingrasMP
Wiebke Scharff Rethfeldt @W_Scharff
Pauline Frizelle @pfrizelleslt
Samuel Calder @SamuelDCalder
Deb Denman @deb_denman
Al Gallagher @aoifelilyg1
Marleen Westerveld @MWslp
Mark Boyes @me_boyo

PLEASE ADD other people and their Twitter handles on a new post below and then this post will be updated.

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Inclusive Education - Essential Knowledge for Success

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Online Inclusive Education Course - FutureLearn

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Free video: DLD - What every class teacher needs to know

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Free video: DLD - What every class teacher needs to know

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Moor House School and College: Research and Training

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Welcome to our introduction to Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) - What every class teacher needs to know training with Sue Marr, Specialist Teacher (SLCN) and Moor House Research and Training Institute Trainer.

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DLD - What every class teacher needs to know!

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Welcome to our introduction to Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) - What every class teacher needs to know training with Sue Marr, Specialist Teacher (SLCN) and Moor House Research and Training Institute Trainer.

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The DLD Project | Developmental Language Disorder Information, Resources & Training

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The DLD Project provides evidence-based Developmental Language Disorder information, resources, and training in Australia.

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NAPLIC has launched a series of online learning modules designed for professionals who have some understanding of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), but who wish to develop greater insight and skill with diagnosing the condition.

These free modules are between 20 and 60 minutes long and feature additional handouts and resources.

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NAPLIC has launched a series of online learning modules designed for professionals who have some understanding of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), but who wish to develop greater insight and skill with diagnosing the condition. These free modules are between 20 and 60 minutes long and feature additional handouts and resources.

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Welcome to DLD and Me! Spreading the word about Developmental Language Disorder Latest Articles What is Developmental Language Disorder? DLD is a brain difference that makes talking and listening difficult. DLD affects about 2

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RADLD (Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder) 

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RADLD (Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder) 

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Welcome to RADLD.ORG, created to Raise Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder or 'DLD'. Here you will learn more about DLD, access resources and find out how to raise awareness.

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SAVE THE DATE | #DLDDAY 2024 FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER 2024 Developmental Language Disorder is a hidden but common disability that affects 1 in 14 people causing difficulties understanding and using language for no known reason. The 2024 DLDday theme will be announced in the coming months. Please contact the RADLD...

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Developmental Language Disorder

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is the new term to replace Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Developmental Language Disorder is diagnosed when children fail to acquire their own language for no obvious reason. This results in children who have difficulty understanding what people say to them, and struggle to articulate their ideas and feelings. Recent research has shown that, on average,...

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Race car driver Marie-Soleil Labelle races to raise awareness of DLD/TDL as RADLD's first official Spokesperson Quebec (CA) Race car driver and bilingual French-English speaker, Marie-Soleil Labelle is known affectionately as 'Sunny'. RADLD is excited to announce that Sunny has joined us as our first official spokesperson. Sunny has...

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Amelia, a 9-Year-Old UK school girl and RADLD Ambassador, is living her best life. With support, she continues to reach her goals despite being diagnosed with an 'invisible' communication disability affecting 2 students in every class of 30. Amelia loves to be busy! She plays the cornet, enjoys dance,...

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Marie-Soleil Labelle is a young racing car driver from Quebec. Marie-Soleil has Developmental Language Disorder. What an inspiration! This video is in French, but you can add auto-subtitles if French is not your language. Thank you Marie-Soleil for sharing your story with RADLD.

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RADLD - Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder - RADLD

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How to teach vocabulary for reading comprehension

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How to teach vocabulary for reading comprehension

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Blog post from Emina McLean

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Vocabulary tiers
Vocabulary can be divided into three tiers. They are:

Tier 1 - common in oral language, likely learned from everyday experiences (e.g. 'eat', 'animal')

Tier 2 - academic, procedural, common in written language, essential for reading and writing (e.g. 'evaluate', 'conceptualise')

Tier 3 - domain specific, common in written language, essential for specific/specialist subject study (e.g. 'isotope', 'aphasia')
How we learn words
When we first start learning words we are very young. For most children this happens through hearing speech sounds joined together to form words and having word meaning attached to that sound combination. This is phonological input and semantic association. In the simplest terms, we need to hear the word and we need someone to tell us the meaning that goes with the word's sound properties.

Think about watching a baby. How do they learn a word? An adult will say, 'mumma' and refer to themselves, or say 'dog' over and over and point or refer to a dog (real, toy or in a book). So that's the first part. That is how Tier 1 vocabulary develops. Phonological input paired with meaning association.

Semantic mapping (the pairing of sound with meaning) happens via what is called fast and slow mapping.

Fast mapping: To start laying down new lexical representations, students initially hear a new word, they store its phonological form and begin to map semantic features to that form. Think quick and superficial from a few exposures.

Slow mapping occurs over an extended period. Students continue to hear the word and they refine the phonological and semantic representations of the word as it occurs and reoccurs in various contexts. Slow mapping leads to deep word learning and by extension, comprehension growth. So, it is slow and occurs after many, many exposures.

Children with language and/or learning difficulties typically have slower fast and slow mapping so they need more exposures at both fast and slow mapping stages.

Many words that occur frequently in text (especially academic texts), occur infrequently in everyday spoken language. Students are therefore unlikely to learn academic language through spoken language. That also means that students from early to mid-primary school and beyond will come across unknown words all the time when reading. When there are many words that they don't know this can be quite disruptive for Reading Comprehension (RC). Of course there is no way we can teach students all words. Through reading we continue to learn new words for most of our life. But, if we explicitly teach academic language we can reduce the number of unknown words they encounter when reading over time.

So, on top of phonological and semantic input, for RC they also need:

- Multiple exposures to the orthographic representation

- Multiple exposures to the word in a variety of sentences types (varying syntax)

- Multiple exposures to the word's diverse morphology (i.e. to understand how the word can be modified and to what effect)

When we come across an unknown word in oral language phonological input comes first and meaning is mapped to that. In text, orthographic input comes first and meaning begins to be mapped to that. Either way, for rich mental representations of word meaning to develop, we need all of the above to occur.
How well we know a word
"Knowing a word is not an all or nothing proposition" (Beck et al., 2015, p.10).

Have a look at these two models:

Dale (1965) describes our word knowledge levels as:

1. Never saw it before

2. Heard (or saw) it but don't know what it means

3. Recognise it in context as having something to do with _______.

4. Know it well

Beck, McKeown & Omanson proposed a more detailed model in 1987:

1. No knowledge

2. General sense (e.g. I know it means something bad)

3. Narrow, context-bound knowledge

4. Has knowledge of the word but is unable to recall it readily enough to use it/know it in an appropriate situation

5. Rich, de-contextualised knowledge of a word's meaning, its relationship to other words, and its extension to metaphorical uses

Beck, McKeown and Kucan (2013) describe this in detail in their book which I have put as a suggested resource below. Developing high quality mental representations of words involves teaching all aspects detailed above. Make sure your vocabulary instruction has a large focus on text level language. Multiple repetitions and/or multiple encounters are required. We are aiming for "rich, de-contextualised knowledge of a word's meaning, its relationship to other words, and its extension to metaphorical uses" (Beck, McKeown and Kucan, 2013, p.11).
The aim is a literate lexicon
"The 'literate lexicon' includes difficult words that occur in academic contexts, particularly in middle school and high school classes that students often take. In science, for example, students may encounter words such as prediction, deformable, exploration, and genetic; in mathematics, literate words may include algebraic, Pythagorean, transformation, and geometric; and in literature, students may encounter affectation, luminous, meticulous, and contiguous (Nippold, 2017a). Of note, all of these words are morphologically complex in that they each contain a root word and one or more affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and that all of the words express abstract meanings and have a low frequency of occurrence in the language." ( Nippold, 2018, p.211-212)

A literate lexicon includes well developed Tier 2 (and 3) vocabulary. The capacity to define words, and create associations, combinations, and relations between words, are critical skills in the academic context, and they are essential skills for RC. Learning in context is not enough.

Good vocabulary knowledge is associated with good RC in the literature. Knowing many words in oral language is helpful for RC, but what is more helpful is knowing many words in the context of text. As much as possible we should base our vocabulary work in text. My view is that it is best to develop Decoding (D)/Word Recognition (WR) and oral language in the first two years of school then get stuck into text-level approaches as detailed below.

How to choose words

Beck, McKeown and Kucan (2013) and others are clear that Tier 2 words are the most important and valuable to teach. Of course, domain specific words matter too (Tier 3). The work of Averil Coxhead (2000) has been so helpful in this regard. She developed and evaluated The Academic Word List (AWL) as part of her master thesis.

If you are interested in reading about the development, evaluation and later reflections, these are the details you will need:
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238. Coxhead, A. (2012). The Academic Word List 10 years on: Research and teaching implications. TESOL Quarterly, 45(2), 355-362.
Some word list links are provided in the suggested resources below.

Deliberate, direct, teacher-led instruction

I mostly use the work of Hollingsworth and Ybarra (2018) to guide me in developing instruction and lesson plans. I've listed their book below in the suggested resources.

Below is a brief sample outline of part of one lesson. It's an example of what the first slide might look like when teaching a new word. I've chosen a rare word to make this is bit more interesting for you. I suggest developing a base slide or two. Develop a list of Tier 2 words that you want to teach. You can then insert the target word and appropriate examples for each slide.
_________________________________________________________________________
absquatulate

Definition: To leave suddenly or abruptly

Synonyms: abscond, bolt, depart, disappear, flee, scram, run off

Antonyms: stay, arrive, stand still
Sentence examples:
During the important meeting, the woman apologised about her need to absquatulate.

I was at the park hoping my toddler would not absquatulate like last time.

When caught digging in the garden my dog seems to absquatulate.
This is tedius. In my mind I am absquatulating. The shopkeeper absquatulated with the day's earnings. As an introvert, absquatulation is my favourite pastime.
_________________________________________________________________________

Here are some examples of partial scripts and steps to guide you:

Today we are going to learn a new word.

Repeat both the word and the meaning 2-3 times.

Activate prior learning and link to real life examples.

Ask students to tell you (out loud) what the word is.

Ask students to tell their partner what the word is.

Ask the students to write the word.

Then I'll say the word again and they'll say the meaning (all aloud)

Then I'll say the meaning and they'll say the word (all aloud)

I will ask 1-3 students to tell me the meaning of the word (random selection)

Then: Let's talk about some synonyms. Remember a synonym is a different word with the same meaning. [go over the synonyms]

Let's talk about some antonyms. Remember an antonym is a different word with the opposite meaning, [go over the antonyms]

Present written sentence examples. Start simple and straightforward (3-5 clear sentence examples that use the word correctly). You can use a picture to support each sentence if you'd like.

Present some written sentences where it is used correctly and incorrectly and get them to identify which are examples and non-examples. I expect them to justify in full sentences why.

Get them to write three different sentences using the word (give feedback/get them to share).

Notice in the examples I've provided that there is an increase in complexity (via morphology). Depending on their level, you can play around with morpheme additions. Do not do this in the first instance but something like this is a good task for students during guided and independent practice. You can get students to write a range of sentences using various affixes with the root words and these can then be discussed as a whole class or they can discuss with their peers and compare/contrast their examples.

Another step-up task could be to have students write/describe a time they felt a need to absquatulate and why. This requires them to demonstrate a deeper knowledge of the word (an application).

Further step-ups relate to learning to play with the word meaning in their writing. Being able to use a word to evoke emotions, to induce laughter, to set a scene or mood, are all ways students demonstrate to us they have developed a deep knowledge of the word meaning.

Remember Beck, McKeown & Omanson's (1987) stages of word knowledge from above:

1. No knowledge

2. General sense (e.g. I know it means something bad)

3. Narrow, context-bound knowledge

4. Has knowledge of the word but is unable to recall it readily enough to use it/know it in an appropriate situation

5. Rich, de-contextualised knowledge of a word's meaning, its relationship to other words, and its extension to metaphorical uses

Your vocabulary instruction is building stages 2-5, so sequence your instruction accordingly. Start basic and move to more complex. Stage 5 really develops over time after reading (and writing) the word in many contexts, for many purposes and audiences, and attaching and detaching various morphemes from its root. Stage 5 can't necessarily be taught, but set them up as best you can for this to develop over time. As the minimum, when they come across words in text that we have explicitly taught them, we want them to be at Level 3 (above).

In-context instruction and strategies for students

Of course, in-context instruction matters too. Some would say it matters more! Teaching students to monitor and self-manage their comprehension is vital. We need to explicitly teach them how to do this, not just expect them to figure it out. There are two main ways we can do this.
Contextual abstraction
This is a fancy term for guessing. Guessing is not okay when we are teaching Decoding (D)/Word Recognition (WR) as per the Simple View of Reading (SVR), but it is strongly encouraged in the Linguistic Comprehension (LC) aspect of the SVR. This is an important distinction. We need to teach students how to make informed guesses as to the meanings of unknown words, when possible.
The four contexts (as per Beck, McKeown & Kulcan, 2013, page 7)
How easy or hard unknown words are to guess the meaning for depends on the context within which they occur. The four contexts unknown words occur in are listed here from easiest to hardest:

1. Directive - the context is likely to lead to the student identifying the correct meaning

2. General - the context provides enough information for the student to place the word in a general category

3. Non-directive - the context is likely to offer no assistance as to the word's meaning

4. Mis-directive - the context is likely to direct the student to the opposite meaning
Some key questions for students to ask
Teach students how to interrogate text-level language through demonstration and provision of guided practice, then support students to be able to do this for themselves. Key questions that we want them to be able to ask when confronted with unknown words are:

1. What is the purpose of the unknown word here? Is it acting as a noun, verb, adjective etc.? Obviously, you need to have explicitly taught word categories previously.

2. What is going on around this word? Look at meaning word by word then overall in the sentence or paragraph. Look at syntax. What is the structure telling us in part or in its totality?

3. What detail or idea is missing that this word could account for?

Then students are expected to make some educated guesses. This can be done by inserting some words they know the meaning for, in place of the unknown word. Then their role is to decide what the added word does to the sentence in terms of meaning and structure.

4. What does the hypothesised word meaning do to this sentence? Do I think I am on the right track?

5. [ask a peer] Do you think this makes sense? Why or why not? Do you have any other suggestions? What is the reasoning behind your suggestions?

Given the four contexts that I have described above, these questions can vary in their effectiveness but students are always taking something away from this learning experience with respect to their LC and Reading Comprehension (RC) if we are encouraging them to analyse and deduce in such a structured and thorough way.

In your deliberate direct vocabulary instruction you can also incorporate these contexts i.e. explicitly teach students that words can and do appear in these four contexts. Get students to write sentences with the new word(s) they have learned in the lesson, using them in each of the four ways. They can then swap with their partners/peers and compare/contrast.
Morphological analysis
First students need to know what morphemes are and how to identify them. Teaching vocabulary requires teaching morphology. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaningful information within a word. There are two different ways we can categorise and describe morphemes.
Free and bound morphemes
In the word 'cats' there are two meaningful elements. The 'cat' part tells us we are talking about an animal that can be a pet, it has whiskers, it purrs, it can scratch etc. The 's' part tells us that there is more than one cat. This is the plural 's' marker.

'Cat' is what we call a free morpheme because it is free to stand alone. We can also refer to this as the root word. The 's' is what we call a bound morpheme because it needs to be bound to another word to function. On its own it does nothing.
Lexical and grammatical morphemes
Morphemes can be lexical (function as key markers of meaning) or grammatical (function as key markers of grammar).

Lexical morphemes have dictionary definitions i.e. they are free morpheme/root words. Lexical morphemes can also be affixes like 'pre-' meaning 'previous to' or 'before'. The key here is that they have meaning as opposed to grammatical function.

The word 'happy' is a lexical morpheme. It has a dictionary definition.The word 'happily' has two morphemes. The '-ly' is a grammatical morpheme. An adjective has been changed to an adverb. Morphemes are grammatical when they perform a strictly grammatical function. They are not words. They are morphemes. Some suffix examples are:

- Present progressive -ing

- Plural 's'

- Past tense -ed

I suggest explicitly teaching affixes. The direct teaching advice I gave above works fine for this. You can find lists of prefixes and suffixes online and there are some structured word approaches available. With younger students (early years) I suggest teaching grammatical morphemes first, orally and in text form, then you can focus on teaching the many lexical bound morphemes (prefixes and suffixes) in text form from mid-primary school onward.

Teaching students to complete morphological analysis once the above has been taught:

1. Model how to do it many times

2. Guided practice with feedback

3. Independent practice

We want them to be able to independently:

1. Identify the number of morphemes

2. Identify the root word (free morpheme) and the affixes (bound morphemes)

3. Identify the meaning of as many morphemes as possible

4. Ask themselves whether this looks like or sounds like any other words that they know

5. Make a guess as to what the collective meaning could be and how morphemes are influencing one another

6. Discuss with a peer and compare ideas

7. Ask the teacher for support (provide explicit direct instruction as required)
A final note on in-context learning
There is of course scope for direct instruction in-context too, for one student, a small group, or the whole class as appropriate. I often encourage students to use their strategies first but when I can see that the context of the word is mis-directive or non-directive I will usually break from the task to explicitly teach it. Remember, strong mental representations require phonological, semantic, orthographic, and morphological features to be taught and reinforced multiple times in multiple contexts.

What the literature tells us

- Vocabulary is a predictor of RC in children and adolescents

- Once students are reading, vocabulary development depends on exposure to print NOT oral language

- Explicit teaching of words alone is insufficient and in-text/in-context experiences are vital

- Explicit vocabulary instruction research findings are mixed i.e. some studies only show improved RC for words learned, not general RC improvement (e.g. Elleman et al., 2009; Wright & Cervetti, 2017)

- Less skilled readers benefit more from explicit vocabulary instruction than skilled readers (therefore it makes a good RtI Tier 2 intervention for those who are behind)

- Interactive instruction is better than definition/dictionary based. I've described above some ways to ensure you do this. Do not get students to look up unknown words in the dictionary. Word learning has to go so much deeper.

Suggested resources

Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction by Beck, McKeown & Kucan (2013)

Explicit Direction Instruction: The Power of the Well-Crafted, Well-Taught Lesson by Hollingsworth & Ybarra (2018)

Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension: A Handbook by Oakhill, Cain and Carsten (2015) [Chapter 5 - Knowing and Learning the Meaning of Words]

LSHSS Forum on Vocabulary Across the School Grades: https://academy.pubs.asha.org/2019/10/lshss-forum-on-vocabulary-across-the-school-grades/

https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist (Coxhead, 2000)

http://www.uefap.com/vocab/select/awl.htm (based on Coxhead, 2000)

http://www.newgeneralservicelist.org/nawl-new-academic-word-list (Browne, 2013)

https://cer.schools.nsw.gov.au/professional-learning/middle-years.html (NSW Centre for Effective Reading, nd)

Professor Pamela Snow provides an introduction to vocabulary instruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aAsP_my4Do&feature=youtu.be

Emina McLean talks about how to teach vocabulary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfTz3-2HtaI&feature=youtu.be

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How to teach vocabulary for reading comprehension

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A little about vocabulary Vocabulary tiers Vocabulary can be divided into three tiers. They are: Tier 1 - common in oral language, likely learned from everyday experiences (e.g. 'eat', 'animal') Tier 2 - academic, procedural, common in written language, essential for reading and writing (e.g. 'evaluate', 'conceptualise

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Supporting New Word Learning in Secondary Schools 

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Supporting New Word Learning in Secondary Schools 

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from Dr Sarah Spencer

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Thesaurus and word tools

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Thesaurus and word tools for your creative needs. Find the word you’re looking for!

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Interactive visual dictionary and thesaurus

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C Doyle

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Hyde Park Central School District generated lists

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Curriculum & Instruction / Grades K-12 Tier II Vocabulary Lists

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The Hyde Park Central School District empowers our community to strive for excellence and embrace the opportunities of our globally connected world.

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Based on David Hyerle's work

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Use this template for pre-post assessment of key vocabulary

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A simple overview of vocabulary issues and strategies to consider.

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Engage with DLD - summaries & links to research

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Engage with DLD - summaries & links to research

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Summaries and research via City University, Cambridge University and University of Bath. Includes links to open access papers.

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Please find below summaries of key DLD research findings. We hope these summaries are useful in improving your understanding of DLD.

Our understanding of DLD is always evolving as more research comes out - all recommendations found below are based on evidence but may change over time as our knowledge and understanding of DLD changes.

As everyone is unique, our recommendations may not suit all individuals with DLD. Please keep this in mind!

Toseeb, U., & St Clair, M. C. (2020). Trajectories of prosociality from early to middle childhood in children at risk of Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of Communication Disorders, 85.

Our aim was to look at how children with DLD develop prosocial skills and compare their prosocial skill development to children without DLD. We looked at how prosocial skills developed from age 5 to 11. We then looked at social, behavioural and emotional outcomes at age 11 in children with DLD. We looked at these outcomes when considering different types of prosocial development in childhood.

Children with DLD had slightly lower prosocial skills at age 5, 7 and 11 years old. This was when compared to children without DLD.

We found four groups of children with different prosocial development paths from age 5 to 11. Group 1 (18% of all children) had high prosocial skills across childhood. Group 2 (35% of all children) had a stable level of prosocial skills across development, but at a lower level. Group 3 (6% of all children) had high levels of prosocial skills early in childhood, but these reduced in middle and late childhood. Group 4 (41% of all children) had lower prosocial skills early childhood, but these increased to middle and later childhood.

Children with DLD were more likely to be in the "stable low" group (Group 2) and less likely to be in the group with high prosocial skills (Group 1) across development. Children with DLD were no more or less likely to be part of the other two groups.

Individuals with DLD who were in the groups that had lower prosocial skills at age 11 (Groups 2 and 3) had more emotional, peer, conduct and hyperactivity problems at age 11.

Where can I read this paper?

This paper is open access, which means everyone can read it. Please click to find the full paper.

DLD and Socialisation Strengths and Weaknesses

Lloyd-Esenkaya, V.; Russell, A.J.; Clair, M.C.S. What Are the Peer Interaction Strengths and Difficulties in Children with Developmental Language Disorder? A Systematic Review. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 3140.

This study looks at research measuring how of children with DLD play or interact with other children. We were interested to know how big the studies are, where in the world they are conducted, and who took part in the research (e.g. number of boys vs girls). We also wanted to know what the research has found out about the social skills of children with DLD.

Between 1981 - 2018, 28 studies have looked at the social skills of English-speaking primary school children with DLD.

Most studies took place in America (61%) or the UK (25%). More boys than girls took part in the research.

Most studies which looked at the children's overall social skills found higher levels of peer problems in children with DLD. However, every child is different! Not all children with DLD have difficulties socialising or making friends.

Sometimes researchers watch children while they are playing and record what they see. Many children with DLD have challenges joining in with their peers. They often wait for other children to invite them to play.

Unfortunately, children with DLD are more likely to be bullied than children without DLD.

Social skills in children with DLD is under-researched. We need to do more studies with larger groups of children to be sure of the findings. Right now, it is difficult to identify key social interaction styles which will apply to lots of children with DLD.

Children with DLD are likely to need extra support for their social skills. We know social skills are important for mental wellbeing and doing well in school. Teachers need to help prevent children with DLD from being bullied.

This study has shown there are many areas we need to understand better. Why do so many children with DLD experience peer problems? Most studies of social skills have focused on children's weaknesses, so what are their strengths?

Where can I read this paper?

This is an open access paper so anyone can read it. Click for the full paper.

Do peer problems influence emotional problems?

Forrest, C. L., Gibson, J. L., Halligan, S. L., & St Clair, M. C. (2018). A longitudinal analysis of early language difficulty and peer problems on later emotional difficulties in adolescence: Evidence from the Millennium Cohort Study. Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 3.

We wanted to find out if peer problems (difficulties with friends) had an effect on emotional problems. We used data from the Millennium Cohort Study to examine a huge group of children and adolescents. We grouped them into children at risk of DLD or children with no language difficulties. We used teacher and parent's views on social problems and emotional wellbeing. We know there are higher rates of anxious and depressive feelings in young people with DLD. We tested whether the higher rates of anxious and depressive feelings were due to difficulties socialising, not just their language skills.

The Millennium Cohort Study is a large study of children born in the year 2000-2001 from across Britain. Children and their families were first interviewed at age 9 months and then followed up every few years at age 3, 5, 7, 11 and 14. The age 17 data has just been released. Using longitudinal data like this allows us to look at developmental patterns over time. We can also get a better understanding of why changes might be occurring.

We found that even children and adolescents who are at risk of DLD, but do not yet have a formal diagnosis, experience more difficulties with social and emotional wellbeing than their peers who do not have language difficulties. We also found that this difference in emotional wellbeing between the two groups was partly 'explained' by peer problems. That is, peer problems were seen to be influencing emotional problems. This was found at age 7 and age 14. So, peer problems at age seven influenced emotional problems at age seven. Also, these peer problems at age seven influenced later emotional problems at age 14.

This paper adds to a lot of other evidence that children and young people with DLD have more difficulties with social and emotional wellbeing than their peers without language difficulties. It also tells us that having difficulties with making friends can lead to negative feelings and emotions. Supporting a child to develop positive peer relationships and friendships may help to improve their emotional wellbeing.

Where can I read this paper?

This is an open access paper so anyone can read it. Click for the full paper.

Does emotion regulation affect peer problems and emotional problems?

Forrest, C. L., Gibson, J. L., Halligan, S. L., & St Clair, M. C. (2020). A Cross-Lagged Analysis of Emotion Regulation, Peer Problems, and Emotional Problems in Children With and Without Early Language Difficulties: Evidence From the Millennium Cohort Study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(4), 1227-1239.

We wanted to find out if children and young people with DLD develop differently from their peers in terms of social and emotional wellbeing. We know that adolescents with DLD can experience more feelings of anxiety and depression, but we're not really sure how these difficulties develop. We investigated whether a difficulty with regulating emotions in the early years could be responsible for peer problems and emotional problems in later childhood and adolescence.

Using the Millennium Cohort Study we looked at emotion regulation difficulties, peer problems and emotional problems at 3, 5, 7, 11 and 14 years old. We compared children who were 'at risk of DLD' (rDLD) to children with no language difficulties. We found that children at risk of DLD had more difficulty managing their emotions, had more problems with friends and were more likely to experience feelings of worry or sadness than children without language difficulties. Poor emotion regulation at age 3, 5 and 7 was responsible for later peer and emotional problems at age 5, 7, 11 and 14 for both groups. There was a stronger link between poor emotion regulation abilities at age 3 and emotional problems at age 5 for the rDLD group. That is, children who struggled to manage their emotions at age 3 also had more feelings of sadness and worries at age 5. This effect was stronger in the rDLD group than for the group of children without a language difficulty. A similar finding was found in middle childhood - feelings of sadness and worries at 5 years of age led to more difficulties managing emotions at 7 years of age in children at risk of DLD. We also found that peer and emotional problems were associated with each other across development. That is, children who had difficulties with friends at age 3 also experienced more feelings of sadness and worries at age 5. Similarly, those with more feelings of sadness and worries at age 3 had more difficulties with friends at age 5. So children who have fewer friends felt more sadness but also children who feel sad have fewer friends.

This paper tells us that children and young people with language difficulties, such as DLD, have more difficulties with friends and poorer emotional wellbeing. We also know that children with language difficulties have more difficulty controlling their emotions than children without language difficulties. These early difficulties controlling emotions can increase feelings of sadness and worry. This might be because they have trouble labelling emotions or experience fewer social situations where they learn to control emotions. Perhaps more focus on naming emotions and modelling social situations could help to improve social and emotional difficulties. However, more research needs to be done in this area to figure out what is causing the difficulties in controlling emotions.

Where can I read this paper?

This is an open access paper so anyone can read it. Click for the full paper.

Emotional Health and Self-Efficacy

Play, Prosocial behaviours and DLD

Evidence based pathways for interventions for children with Language Disorders

Can Positive Aspects of Emotional Competence Prevent Internalizing Symptoms?

Samson, A. C., van den Bedem, N. P., Dukes, D., & Rieffe, C. (2020). Positive Aspects of Emotional Competence in Preventing Internalizing Symptoms in Children with and without Developmental Language Disorder: A Longitudinal Approach. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1-13.

Previous research has suggested that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) experience a higher level of internalising problems. Internalising problems are mood problems, such depression and anxiety symptoms. In young children these can sometimes be complaints about their body, such as tummy aches. This study looks at whether positive emotions, emotional awareness, bodily awareness and communication skills protect children with or without DLD from developing internalising problems.

While better communication skills may help reduce internalising problems, positive emotions and emotion awareness still play an important role in protecting children from internalising problems. Language and communication interventions alone may not be enough to prevent or reduce internalising problems in children with DLD.

Therefore, this paper suggests that programmes and activities focusing on improving emotion awareness, alongside programmes focusing on language improvement, may be more promising in terms of reducing internalising problems in children with DLD.

Where can I read this paper?

This paper is open access, which means everyone can read it.

A possible neurocognitive explanation for DLD

Ullman, M. T., Earle, F. S., Walenski, M., & Janacsek, K. (2020). The Neurocognition of Developmental Disorders of Language. Annual Review of Psychology, Vol 71, 71, 389-417.

This paper reviews research in relation to a specific idea of what might be the brain and cognitive differences that cause DLD (as well as dyslexia and speech-sound disorders, such as stuttering). The paper looks at what is called the "Procedural circuit Deficit Hypothesis". This hypothesis states that the language learning difficulties in individuals with DLD are due to differences in the brain circuitry that supports procedural memory. However, a different memory system (declarative memory) is not affected in individuals with DLD. This paper reviews evidence that supports this idea.

Procedural memory is more developed in younger children. Declarative memory needs more time and develops across childhood. If language learning is initially reliant on procedural memory, difficulties in this system in children with DLD may cause early delays in language development.

Procedural memory has been shown to be important for grammar learning. For instance, the better a person's procedural memory, the better they use and understand grammar. However, grammar can be learned in both the procedural and declarative memory systems. As the declarative system needs time to develop in early childhood, this may be why there are delays in learning grammar in children with DLD.

Individuals with DLD have been shown to have structural differences in parts of the brain associated with procedural memory. However, researchers have not found consistent differences in the brains systems associated with declarative memory and learning. Overall, there is good evidence that problems with procedural learning may be the key problem in language learning in children with DLD.

These ideas do not mean that children with DLD can't learn from their procedural memory systems. But the ideas do indicate that their procedural learning is not as efficient as in children without DLD. Children with DLD are likely relying on the declarative learning and memory system, which tend to be used later in development. This may be why children with DLD learn language a bit later and with more effort than those without DLD.

Understanding the underlying reasons why children with DLD struggle to learn language is key for suitable therapy and treatment of DLD. Indeed, the authors suggest that there are "pharmacological, behavioural and other interventions" that can help enhance procedural and declarative memory ability. These interventions could be useful in children with DLD.

Where can I read this paper?

What elements predict concerns about the transition to secondary school?

Are young adults with DLD more or less likely to commit criminal offenses?

How aware is the public of DLD? A survey of public awareness in European Countries

Early language skills and emotional recognition in children with and without DLD

Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Language Disorder

SLT experiences in diagnosis and assessing children with DLD

Can family involvement improve school adjustment in adolescents with DLD?

Rates of re-offending in young offenders with undiagnosed DLD

Listening to professionals, children and families to improve services for DLD in schools

Gallagher, A. L., Murphy, C. A., Conway, P. F., & Perry, A. (2019). Engaging multiple stakeholders to improve speech and language therapy services in schools: an appreciative inquiry-based study. BMC health services research, 19(1), 226.

Speech language therapists (SLTs) and teachers both play an important role in providing support for children with DLD in school, but they rarely work together. As a result, children with DLD may receiving less SLT service and support in school than needed. This paper aims to involve SLTs, teachers, parents and children with DLD in designing their ideal SLT service and support in school. This is done by having parents, SLTs and teachers take part in five group discussions, and having children with DLD take part in interviews.

Four key ideas appeared during the group discussions and interview:

1) The ideal support:

The ideal support should be tailored to the child's needs and interest. Tasks in school should be challenging yet possible to succeed. It is also important that the support targets difficulties other than language, such as social difficulties.

2) The ideal setting:

Parents, SLTs and teachers suggested that the ideal classroom setting should encourage listening and noticing. Children with DLD suggested that the ideal setting should be safe for taking risks, have consistent and clear rules, and allow children to have control in decisions. All the participants agreed that the ideal setting should be inclusive.

3) Priority outcomes:

Parents, SLTs and teachers said that a priority outcome is for children to connect with others. For example, children should have the opportunity to participate in class. Another priority outcome mentioned by children and parents is to understand social situations as well as other people. Other priority outcomes for children include managing their needs in school independently and learning to stand up for themselves.

4) The ideal service:

Parents, teachers and SLTs suggested that an ideal service should take the child's needs as its most important consideration. An ideal service should also be caring for the child and should involve the child and his/her parents in the process. However, SLTs, parents and teachers differed in their view of the SLTs role. While parents and teachers want the SLTs to be working in the classroom, SLTs suggested that they should act as advisors.

There are both similar and differing views between SLTs, teachers, parents and children with DLD in terms of their ideal services and supports in school. Similar views may provide a common ground for these groups to work together to improve support for children with DLD in schools.

The authors suggest that different groups might have different views because they have different experiences and a different focus. For example, children with DLD experience difficulties in school directly without knowing how supports for them are planned. Teachers and SLTs focus on planning support for children with DLD without experiencing their difficulties directly. Although these differences make it difficult for different groups to work together, addressing these differences may help improve SLT services and supports in school. So, parents are encouraged to express their views on SLT services and supports in school when suitable. Also, teachers and SLTs are encouraged to listen to children with DLD. Children should be able to have their say on the supports they are given in school.

Where can I read this paper?

This paper is open access, which means everyone can read it.

Please click to find the full paper.

Exploring sensory profiles

Simpson, K., Paynter, J., Ziegenfusz, S., & Westerveld, M. (2020). Sensory Profiles in School-Age Children with Developmental Language Disorder. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 1-10.

Previous research finds children with developmental conditions, such as autism and ADHD, frequently experiences sensory differences. Yet, there is little research on the sensory profile of children with DLD. This paper looks at the sensory profiles of children with DLD, and whether their sensory profiles are related to their language skills.

Sensory profile = response to sensory information (touch, taste, smell, sound, sight, balance and movement)

The findings of this paper suggest that many children with DLD face challenges in responding to sensory stimuli. This shows that children with DLD may affect multiple areas of development, not just language.

Previous studies suggested that abnormal sensory profile is related to poorer communication, and emotional/behavioural outcomes in autistic children and children with ADHD. Although little research has found similar relationships in children with DLD, identification of their unique sensory profiles may be important when providing tailored support during interventions.

Where can I read this paper?

This paper is not open access so we cannot provide a link at this time.

If you wish to read the full paper, please email E-DLD@bath.ac.uk.

Adlof, S. M. (2020). Promoting Reading Achievement in Children With Developmental Language Disorders: What Can We Learn From Research on Specific Language Impairment and Dyslexia?. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(10), 3277-3292.

Both Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and dyslexia are disorders that can affect reading comprehension. It is now known that the disorders are different but often occur together. However, these two disorders have largely been studied separately. This paper aims to integrate research on DLD and dyslexia as well as to promote the need of considering both disorders together in the future.

More research that looks at children is still needed to improve our understanding about the characteristics and causes of DLD and dyslexia. Knowing about how DLD and dyslexia develop may help improve diagnosis and intervention for these conditions.

A core finding of this paper is the under-identification of DLD. Not only does this present a challenge for research, it also means that some children with DLD are unable to receive the help that they need. To tackle this issue, speech and language therapists should help increase awareness of the role of oral language skills on reading comprehension. Also, all children known to have reading problems should be given an assessment of their language skills. Knowing that DLD and dyslexia often occur together could help to stop DLD from being hidden.

Where can I read this paper:

This paper is open access, which means everyone can read it.

Social cognition and socio-emotional functioning

How one preschool language unit supports children

Harvey, H., & Spencer, S. (2019). Specialist provision for language disorder: Staff and service user views of a preschool language unit. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 35(2), 93-111.

Preschool language units (PLU) are designed to support children with severe and complex language disorders in mainstream schools by providing speech and language therapy and curriculum delivery. This paper aims to understand how a PLU supports children with language disorder. Children and teaching staff are asked for their views using interviews. Parents are asked for their views using questionnaires.

The participants brought up four key points:

Teaching staff and parents suggested that the format of the PLU helped children to become more confident and helped their language skills develop. Children have mixed opinions about joining the mainstream nursery in the day. Some children enjoy having more friends and outdoor space in the mainstream section. Others prefer the quiet in the PLU.

2. The importance of relationships

Children, parents and teaching staff all found relationships built within the PLU valuable. Parents value their relationships with teachers. Children value their relationships with teachers and friends. Teaching staff value their relationships within the staff team. Teaching staff believed that good communication between a team of professionals, including a Speech and Language Therapist, was very important for supporting the children's language development.

Parents and teaching staff agreed that the PLU has a low number of pupils. Opinions on whether this is needed varied. Some thought that a bigger group would be better. Others thought that keeping a low number is more manageable for staff and pupils. Although the PLU is oversubscribed, limitations such as space, resources and class management prevent wider access to the PLU.

Parents and teaching staff considered the PLU to be preparation for moving into mainstream schools. PLU was considered important for supporting the development of children's language skills as well as other specific skills required in a school setting, such as sitting still.

The PLU in this paper is highly regarded by the children, parents as well as teaching staff, who believe the PLU gives positive early educational and social experiences. Features that are perceived to be important for the success of the PLU include: class size, consistent daily routine, approachable staff and extra support for socialising.

This paper only studied one PLU and the responses received may not apply to all other PLUs. However, this paper is useful for giving the first rich description of a specialist preschool resource base for children with language disorders.

Where can I read this paper?

This paper has been made open access, which means everyone can read it.

Peer social networks and DLD

Chen, J., Justice, L. M., Rhoad‐Drogalis, A., Lin, T. J., & Sawyer, B. (2020). Social networks of children with developmental language disorder in inclusive preschool programs. Child development, 91(2), 471-487.

Previous studies have suggested that children with DLD are more likely to struggle in social interactions and peer relations. As a result, the chances of experiencing peer rejection and victimization is concerning. This paper aims to understand the peer social network of children with DLD with their typically developing classmates in an inclusive preschool classroom.

Peer social network: play interactions formed by children within a classroom.

The findings of the paper raise concerns about the peer social networks of children with DLD, as there are nearly twice as many children with DLD experiencing isolation than typically developing children in their preschool years. The 37% rate of peer isolation in children with DLD is similar to the rate of peer interaction problems seen in older children with DLD in other studies. This suggests that problems with peer interaction commonly seen in children with DLD may appear as early as the preschool years and are likely to persist throughout childhood.

Children's peer relationships can influence their academic and social outcomes. It is important for educators to be aware of the problem of peer rejection and isolation for children with DLD. Interventions that promote social competence and social problem-solving skills may be introduced to help children with DLD develop positive peer interactions.

Where can I read this paper?

This paper is not open access so we cannot provide a link at this time.

If you wish to read the full paper, please email .

Predicting reading outcomes

Intervention for spoken language and reading difficulties

Munro, N., Lee, K., & Baker, E. (2008). Building vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness skills in children with specific language impairment through hybrid language intervention: A feasibility study. International journal of language & communication disorders, 43(6), 662-682.

Children with DLD often struggle with spoken language and are at risk of reading difficulties. However, there is little research on interventions that target both spoken language and emergent reading abilities. This paper aims to determine whether a hybrid language intervention that targets vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness should be further researched.

Emergent reading abilities: abilities that precedes and contributes to the development of reading skills.

Phonological awareness: the ability to use and reflect upon the sounds of spoken language. This ability is important for reading skills.

After the intervention, children improved in phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge.

The children also improved in skills that were not targeted in the intervention, for example listening comprehension and storytelling.

The findings of this paper provide initial support for a hybrid language intervention that targets vocabulary knowledge and phonological awareness. As children with DLD have different language difficulties, hybrid language interventions can be useful as speech and language therapists can help support both their spoken and written language needs. Further research and clinical trials may help determine the effectiveness of this intervention.

Where can I read this paper?

Cell phone use in adolescents with DLD

Conti-Ramsden, G., Durkin, K., & Simkin, Z. (2010). Language and social factors in the use of cell phone technology by adolescents with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53(1), 196-208.

Mobile technology has affected how people communicate and connect with one another. While many studies have looked at the use of mobile/cell phones by adolescents, little is known about adolescents with DLD. This paper aims to compare mobile/cell phone use in adolescents with and without DLD. This paper also looks at whether language factors and social factors affect mobile/cell phone use in adolescents.

Language factors include oral language, reading, and spelling ability.

Social factors include shyness, friendships, and social motivation to use a cell phone.

Like their peers without DLD, adolescents with DLD are motivated to use mobile/cell phones for their convenience, freedom, privacy, and safety. The findings of this paper suggest that frequency of cell phone use in adolescents with DLD is not related to their language ability. The authors suggest that it is because the language requirement for communication via cell phones is more relaxed, such that adolescents with DLD do not find texting and phoning difficult.

However, adolescents with DLD text less frequently due to social factors, such as shyness and friendship difficulties. The less frequent use of texting may later reduce their opportunity for social interaction, given that texting is an important method for social connection among adolescents. It is important to address potential social difficulties when supporting adolescents with DLD.

Where can I read this paper?

This paper is not open access so we cannot provide a link at this time.

If you wish to read the full paper, please email .

Young adults with DLD: managing finances

Economic costs and benefits of Speech and Language Therapy

Tele-practice intervention

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Our research | Engage with Developmental Language Disorder

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Please find below summaries of key DLD research findings. We hope these summaries are useful in improving your understanding of DLD. Our understanding of DLD is always evolving as more research comes out - all recommendations found below are based on evidence but may change over time as our knowledge and understanding of DLD changes.

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Mental Health in adolescents with history of DLD

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Mental Health in adolescents with history of DLD

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Open access article In ADLI
Tina Kilpatrick with Suze Leitao & Mark Boyes

Mental health in adolescents with a history of developmental language disorder: The moderating effect of bullying victimisation https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2396941519893313

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Designing out barriers to student access and participation in secondary school assessment

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Designing out barriers to student access and participation in secondary school assessment

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Linda Graham, Haley Tancredi, Jill Willis & Kelli McGraw

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Abstract

In an effort to support student agency in assessment, teachers seek to provide detailed instructions and advice in associated assessment task sheets. In this paper, we analyse a sample English assessment task to consider how such assessment design practices might inadvertently create barriers to access and participation. To make our case, we highlight the learning characteristics of students in two of the most prevalent disability groups: students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and students with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The paper links student agency to the problem of equity by analysing the conditions and criteria of access that are built into assessment design. The article concludes with design recommendations to help improve access for all students, including students in these two highly prevalent disability groups.

Introduction

Assessment task sheets are invitations to create performances that will be judged or assessed by others. By being aware of the criteria against which they will be judged, teachers hope students will grow their capacity for self-assessment and active participation. This capacity to evaluate options in order to make choices and have greater personal control over quality outcomes is at the heart of the definition of student agency (Bandura 2006). It is well established that students develop their understanding of quality and their ability to make choices in assessment by drawing from descriptions of shared criteria and standards, alongside social support such as discussion and multiple exemplars, to ensure their assessment responses amount to more than criteria compliance (Sadler 1987; Torrance 2017). Ideally, assessment task sheets are structural resources that help students engage in practical evaluative judgments as they check their developing work against the specifications, while drawing on habits developed over time and their creative imagination. These are practices that reflect Emirbayer and Mische's ( 1998) threefold definition of human agency. In practice, however, assessment task sheets also serve multiple purposes for teachers, such as providing evidence of complying with the requirements of a syllabus as part of teacher quality assurance processes, and to help justify assessment decisions to students and parents. These multiple purposes can add to the complexity of task sheet designs, which can then present barriers for students to access and understand the task requirements, so that they can actively participate in the assessment. Even though teachers may attempt to support student agency by demystifying some of the 'secret teacher business' of assessment by giving detailed instructions and information in the task sheet, we contend that overly detailed instructions can complicate tasks and create additional barriers for students with disability. Student agency is therefore inextricably linked to accessibility and conceptions of equity.

Equity in summative assessment is a concept that is experiencing radical and rapid change. Where once altering any part of the assessment for any student would be seen as a threat to the reliability of the instrument, teachers are now required to adjust conditions to enable all students to participate in the same task. However, retrospective adjustments can be time-consuming and therefore are typically only made for a small number of students with severe disabilities. As assessment specialists increasingly recognise that consequential validity applies to a much wider range of students, the new challenge for teachers is to design inclusive assessment tasks from the outset (Thurlow and Kopriva 2015; Rajagopalan and Gordon 2016).

Inclusive assessment is a move away from discourses of assessment that originated in the early part of the 20th century and which served an historical function of selection for high status occupations, where the failure of a percentage of students was essential for ranking and sorting purposes (Gipps 1999). Instead of operating as a technology of exclusion, assessment is now expected to operate as a technology of inclusion, where all students have an opportunity to learn and to demonstrate what they have learned (Torrance 2017; Moss et al. 2008). Inclusive assessment designs have contributed alternative approaches for teachers, such as narrative assessment (Bourke and Mentis 2013; Morton et al. 2012) and Universal Design for Learning where greater choice for students in assessment modes is associated with increased agency (Rose and Meyer 2002; Van Haren 2010).

Despite recent advances, the underpinning values from a century ago remain deeply embedded in most classroom assessment traditions (Shepard 2000). Revisiting these dilemmas through the analysis of contemporary assessment task sheets is an opportunity to bring some of those underpinning values to the surface to critically evaluate how assessment task sheets can better support students as active agents who can confidently use the conditions of assessment to shape their assessment performance.

Agency and equity depend on access

When considering the concept of equal educational opportunity almost four decades ago, Burbules et al. ( 1982) drew on Aristotelean principles of equity and fairness to re-define equal educational opportunity as "access", which they then split into two domains. These two domains were

(i)
Conditions of access or external/environmental factors (in this case, an assessment task sheet), and

(ii)
Criteria of access or the personal factors (e.g. traits, skills and abilities) necessary to complete the task.

While these may appear to represent a dichotomy between structure/environment and agency/personal capacity, conditions and criteria of access are integrated and mutually informing concepts. Critically, as Burbules et al. ( 1982) emphasise in the excerpt below, the conditions of access dictate the necessary criteria of access.

Imagine that a book in an elementary school library is on a shelf 6-feet above the ground (with no ladders or other assistance available). In order to have an opportunity to read the book, a student must have access to the book. The fact that the book is on a shelf so high is a 'condition of access'; it is an environmental and external factor. This condition of access determines that a necessary 'criterion of access' to the book is the ability to reach a height of 6-feet; a child 4-feet tall would not (without assistance) have access to the book, hence would have no opportunity to read it. The criteria of access in this case, height or jumping ability, are personal factors, but they are not internal; they are criteria of access precisely because of certain external conditions (Burbules et al. 1982, p. 175, our emphasis).

Problems arise in the realm of assessment when the external conditions create criteria that make access more difficult for some individuals, unfairly disadvantaging them in the process. Students with a disability are those most likely to experience disadvantage in assessment, especially students with so-called "mild" disabilities, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), who are predominantly educated in mainstream schools and seldom receive adjustments (Mulholland 2017; Marshall et al. 2002). Students with a diagnosis of ADHD or DLD qualify as having a disability under Australian anti-discrimination legislation, which requires education providers to provide reasonable adjustments to ensure that people with disability can access and participate in education on the same basis as everyone else. The term 'on the same basis', however, is misleading and can be misinterpreted to mean students with disability must complete the same (unadjusted) assessment. This misinterpretation is compounded by the misperception that reasonable adjustments unfairly confer advantage on students with disability (Dickson 2011).1 This, however, is where the concept of relevance becomes important and it is one that Burbules et al. (1982) emphasise in their consideration of equity.

Determining relevance

Most people intuitively understand that holding an examination in a second-storey assessment hall to which there is only stairway access discriminates against wheelchair users. Drawing on Burbules et al.'s ( 1982) concept of equity, the condition of access in this case is the stairs and the criterion they impose is the ability to walk. The key issue here is whether that is fair and the most important consideration in determining fairness is whether the criterion being imposed is relevant to the core objective of the assessment. Ensuring access to the examination hall for wheelchair users via a lift, for example, is an uncontroversial adjustment and no one would argue that this unfairly advantages the student with disability or that it disadvantages the majority without. However, there remains significant resistance to the provision of adjustments to students with cognitive or language disabilities because of enduring beliefs that these adjustments make the assessment "easier", advantaging students with disability in the process (Poed 2016).

In the case of accessible assessment task sheets, such an advantage would only be true if the benefit was not universal and if students' ability to navigate and interpret the task sheet was the core purpose of the assessment. This is what is meant by the first- and second-order purposes of assessment and this is a useful distinction to apply when considering relevance because the first-order purposes of an assessment task that relate to the core concepts being assessed can easily be overwhelmed by second-order priorities (Cumming and Maxwell 1999). If these second-order priorities complicate assessment task sheets to the extent that the task sheet itself creates barriers to student access and participation, then the result is not a true reflection of that student's response to the (first-order) purpose of the assessment and the assessment is therefore both inequitable and invalid. Addressing barriers to ensure all students can access and participate in educational assessment is more than a professional responsibility, and it is supported by anti-discrimination legislation and education policy. However, teachers understanding of their legal obligations can also be a barrier to inclusive assessment design.

Educators' obligations under Australian legislation

In Australia, it is a federally legislated requirement for reasonable adjustment to be made to support all students with disability to access their education on the same basis as students without disability, as described in the Disability Standards for Education (Australian Government 2005). The Standards are informed by the understanding that disability is socially mediated by barriers to access and participation and apply to any student with a disability as described by the Disability Discrimination Act (Australian Government 1992). As the provision of education is a state/territory government responsibility, it is up to each state and territory to interpret the Standards, communicate responsibilities to school staff, and allocate resources to enable the provision of appropriate supports through quality differentiated teaching practice and educational adjustment, as per the processes outlined in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on Students with Disability (NCCD).

This, however, is where the translation of theory to policy and practice can lead to confusion. A key area of contention is the concept of reasonable adjustment and which students are entitled to it (Poed 2016), followed closely by poor understanding of differentiation and the importance of proactive planning (Graham et al. 2017; Capp 2016). Knowledge of these concepts and the practices to enable them is important for educators to meet their obligations under the Standards, which are not dependent on state or sector-based disability verification procedures or the provision of support funding. Despite this, there remains enduring belief within Australian schools that students must have a 'verified' disability and be in receipt of individually targeted funding to qualify for additional support, even that which should be provided through the first NCCD level of quality differentiated teaching practice (Graham et al. 2017). This thinking sits at odds with the Standards but is influenced by the ways in which education systems have historically determined and distributed resourcing for students with disability (Graham and Jahnukainen 2011).

While the mechanisms differ between education systems across Australia, most students with disability receive support through a hierarchy of responses beginning with differentiated teaching practice and supplementary adjustments, such as extra time in exams. Students considered to have low to moderate support needs are funded through census-based resource allocation methods (Sigafoos et al. 2010), which include a mix of staffing (e.g. learning support teacher allocation) and funding based on school enrolment numbers and school/community need. This general or 'base' funding can be used to fund support programs, teacher release, professional development and the employment of support staff. Schools can also apply for individually targeted funding to support students whose needs cannot be fully met through this base-level resourcing.

To date, individually targeted (per student) funding has been tightly regulated by eligibility criteria that are tied to medical categories and departmental 'verification' of disability (Sigafoos et al. 2010).2 The verification process is highly bureaucratic, labour intensive and administratively expensive. The catch is that there are only a limited number of eligible disability categories and funding is apportioned in accordance with the level and frequency of support required. Queensland's 'Education Adjustment Program' (EAP), for example, provides targeted funding for students who meet specific criteria and who require significant support to access and demonstrate their learning (DET 2015). Within Queensland state schools, there are five eligibility categories: Intellectual Disability (ID), Speech-Language Impairment (SLI), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Physical Impairment (PI), Vision Impairment (VI) or Hearing Impairment (HI).

Categorical resource allocation methods are problematic because linking funding to diagnoses is known to drive diagnosis in eligible categories and to encourage substitution of diagnoses from unfunded to funded categories, e.g. substituting a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Graham 2015a; Skellern et al. 2005). Although education systems in Australia have attempted to blunt the perverse effects of categorical support allocation methods through the increased use of census-based approaches for students considered to have low to moderate support needs (Graham 2016a), and by developing and promoting adjustments-based models such as the NCCD, these programs are poorly communicated by state Departments of Education and are therefore not well understood in schools (Graham 2015a). As we noted earlier, the greatest misconception is that only students who receive individually targeted funding are entitled to reasonable adjustments. A related misconception is that all adjustments require individually targeted funding and a teacher's aide or other staff to provide them (Graham 2015a).

Due to these misconceptions, students with a disability who have not been through the verification process and who do not receive individually targeted funding are vulnerable to not having their learning needs met. In this paper, we focus on two groups that are especially vulnerable: students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and students with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Students in these groups frequently miss out on support and do not receive adjustments, either because ADHD is not listed in the limited number of state-based categories of disability eligible for individually targeted funding, or because state-based eligibility thresholds capture only a small proportion of the students affected by DLD. For these students, it is critical that teachers plan proactively to address potential barriers to their access and participation, as even subtle barriers can have significant functional impact on their learning opportunities and educational outcomes.

ADHD and DLD

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is defined as a persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that is atypical to other individuals at comparable levels of development and which interferes with functioning in at least two settings (American Psychiatric Association 2013). It is the most frequently diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder in Australia, representing 26% of the outcome from all referrals to paediatricians (Wright et al. 2009). Of the seven mental disorders assessed by the second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health, ADHD was the most common with an estimated prevalence of 7.4% (Lawrence et al. 2016). Teachers with 30 students are likely to encounter at least two students with ADHD in their class (Ohan et al. 2008). This number may be much higher if the school is in a disadvantaged community given the higher prevalence of ADHD in low socioeconomic areas (Russell et al. 2016), or if the school streams lower-achieving students and students with disability into separate 'support' classes (Graham 2015b).

The classroom setting represents one of the most challenging environments for students with ADHD (DuPaul and Weyandt 2006). To be successful learners, children are required to concentrate, not be easily distracted or distract others, listen attentively, follow instructions, be organised and prepared, and complete assigned work accurately and in a timely manner (Prosser 2008). However, these everyday tasks place significant demand on neurocognitive functions that are known weaknesses for students with ADHD, including cognitive and interference control, inhibition, working memory, set-shifting, planning, fluency, aggregated executive function, attention and information processing (van Lieshout et al. 2013). Difficulties enacting these cognitive functions manifest in noticeable behaviours. For example, being easily distracted makes it hard to concentrate. Concentration difficulties, in conjunction with working memory limitations, affect listening and reading comprehension, making it difficult to follow complex verbal or written instructions. Not surprisingly, the most common reason for which these students report getting in trouble at school is "not following instructions" and "not doing work" (Graham 2016b).

Although most children with ADHD are of average or above average intelligence, some of the conditions often experienced when engaging in higher-order cognitive tasks-such as dealing with visual and linguistic complexity, distinguishing between important and unimportant information, and prioritising, organising and coordinating-require these students to expend significant effort, time and energy that is incommensurable with that intended by the task. Unnecessary complexity in the way that curriculum, pedagogy and assessment task expectations are communicated presents barriers to students with ADHD with the result being that many give up before they even start. As these students seldom qualify for individually targeted funding (Mulholland 2017), most are reliant on the provision of quality differentiated teaching practices that proactively address potential barriers to these students' access and participation.

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is defined as persistent difficulties in the acquisition and use of language, impacting word and sentence structure, discourse skills, and comprehension and/or production of vocabulary (Bishop, Snowling, Thompson, Greenhalgh, CATALISE consortium 2016). These difficulties are evident in the spoken, written and/or signed language modes (American Psychiatric Association 2013). DLD has been described as one of the most common but poorly identified disabilities of childhood (Whitehouse 2012), with at least 7% of students presenting with DLD at school entry (Tomblin et al. 1997). This translates to around two students in an average sized classroom (Norbury et al. 2016). Most students with DLD have non-verbal cognitive skills within the average range; however, as most higher-order cognitive tasks-such as organising and structuring ideas and converting these to a written text, synthesising key ideas or themes from a written text, or deciphering important from unimportant information-are bound in language, these tasks are extremely difficult for students with DLD.

Clinically significant DLD-that is, DLD with functional impact-is indicated by two or more composite scores on standardised language assessment that are at least 1.25 standard deviations (SD) below the mean (Tomblin et al. 1997). As we noted earlier though, state-based categorical funding models are based on narrow criteria, including standard scores on standardised language assessments. In Queensland, the cut-off for verification is a standard score of 2.0 SD below the mean and, in Victoria, the cut-off is 3.0 SD below. In practice, this means that there may be many students with clinically significant DLD impacting on their ability to access and participate in learning who may not be eligible for individually targeted funding. These verification cut-offs also act as a disincentive for schools to assess for DLD and, as such, there are many students whose language needs have not been identified and who therefore receive no support, even through quality differentiated teaching practice.

As all aspects of curriculum, literacy and interpersonal engagement in the school context are underpinned by language (Ukrainetz and Fresquez 2003), the educational impact of DLD is significant, all pervasive and debilitating (Leonard 2014). Success in the classroom requires children to learn around 2000 new words each year and to map these within their existing language system. They also need to understand, learn and apply new concepts, store and retrieve information, understand and respond to instructions, comprehend written texts, create meaningful and well-structured texts, engage in discussions with others in the classroom, and give their perspective related to classroom content (Nippold 2016). These classroom tasks place significant demand on the linguistic and social language difficulties that are core to DLD, such as learning and using new vocabulary, understanding and appropriately using multiple word meanings and figurative language, using and comprehending morphological structures (for example, to indicate tense, as in walk ing), creating and structuring sentences and longer texts to convey ideas, and adjusting the communicative tone or style used to suit the audience or task (Leonard 2014). Considering potential language barriers and working to minimise these will thus facilitate participation for all students, but is essential for students with DLD to enable them to participate in and demonstrate their learning.

Analysis of a sample assessment task

While many teachers adjust classroom teaching to support students who experience difficulties in learning, including those with ADHD and DLD, adjustments are less common when it comes to assessment, especially in the secondary years of school (Cumming et al. 2013). This concern prompted a research project that investigated how secondary school English teachers design assessment to support student agency and equity (Willis et al. 2016). Analysis of the sample task sheet featured in this paper enabled the research team to engage in a process of collaborative assessment re-design with Senior English teachers from two schools participating in the project. Written permission to use the de-identified task sheet featuring in the following analysis was provided by the English Head of Department from "Happy Days High School". It is acknowledged that the task was designed to be helpful and engaging for students. The analysis focuses on the way that the task is communicated to students, as this level of detailed instruction is typical for contemporary assessment task sheets.

In this paper, we use a multi-layer approach to analyse the sample assessment task from "Happy Days High School" to question whether some of the practices teachers use to support student agency may inadvertently affect access and therefore equity. For example, in the first layer of analysis, we consider how the provision of "helpful" information might contribute to visual complexity, making it harder for students to distinguish between important and unimportant information. In the second layer, we examine procedural complexity, as in the number of elements that students are required to incorporate to meet the assessment criteria, and consider how poor alignment between these elements may make the task more difficult than it needs to be. In the third layer, we review linguistic complexity, or the language that is being used in the task sheet, and contemplate the barriers that this language may create.

Layer 1: visual complexity

The sample Year 8 task sheet is two pages in length, totalling 1,110 words. The first page has 45 text boxes either holding information related to the task or providing spaces that require the student's name, class and classroom teacher's name (see Fig. 1). The top third of the first page includes information that is both important (e.g. conditions, dates due) and unimportant (e.g. Item 'S2') for students. The salience of some of the information provided (e.g. text type, mode) is unclear, without knowing the emphasis placed on explicitly teaching these in class. The text is left-justified with the use of five different font sizes (9, 10, 11, 12 and 14 point), plus bold lettering and bullet points for emphasis.

Year 8 English assessment task sheet (p. 1)

The middle third of the page includes a long and densely written paragraph on context (e.g. what students have been doing in the unit of study leading up to this summative assessment), and a central text box outlining the student's role, the assessment task and the aim of the assessment. This box is heavily outlined and the 'task' sentence at the centre is bolded and underlined, presumably to draw students' attention to these aspects of the task sheet, indicating core requirements of the task. Unlike the previous section, the text is centre-justified with the use of another five different font sizes (10, 11, 12, 14 and 21 point), plus italic and bold lettering for emphasis.

The bottom third of the page contains a large amount of additional information presented with no consistent style. There are three main text box sections. The first includes information on task length, purpose and audience, as well as information relating to the language features (e.g. point of view, tense, field, tenor, mode and tone) relevant to the task. The second box contains information regarding 'Common Curriculum Elements'; however, this information is highly technical and of questionable relevance to students. The final box contains a statement of the student's contribution and spaces for students to sign and date to verify their authorship. Despite the requirement for students to cite any assistance received, there is no room to do so. The text ranges from centre-justified to left-justified with the use of another five different font sizes (8, 9, 10, 11 and 16 point), plus the use of bold lettering and underline for emphasis.

The second page of the assessment task sheet has 25 text boxes presenting a range of performance examples corresponding to A-E grades across two modes: receptive and productive. Although neatly set out, there is an abundance of text in 9-point Arial Narrow font with large, heavily indented bullet points further crowding the text. The formal reference framing the standard descriptors is that 'the student work has the following characteristics' indicating that the rubric has been written for teachers, rather than students. Rubrics, however, should ideally serve both and, if being provided to students, the rubric should help to clarify and not complicate, as this one might.

The emphasis in the way the task is described in different sections varies, which has led to some misalignment. For example the rubric emphasises students' interpretation of the 'poet's use of poetic devices to construct a sense of place, supported by evidence and information from the poem and the poet's background'. However, the rubric does not explicitly refer to the second aspect of the task that was highlighted on the first page (with the use of bold and underline) and which requires the student to 'evaluate [their] personal response to the poem', 'consider how [they] connect to [their] sense of place' and 'how [their] sense of place has been influenced by the poem'. By contrast, the description of the task on the first page does not refer to the poet's background and refers only obliquely to the use of specialised terms regarding poetic devices in the description of field in the 'Language Features' box. In other words, the task description does not exactly match the rubric, the danger being that students who take the instructions on the first-and arguably most important-page at face value may receive lower marks. There is also the potential for inequity in outcomes between (i) students who use the marking rubric as the definitive guide, (ii) students who use the highlighted instructions on the first page of the task sheet as their chief source of information, and (iii) students who attempt to satisfy the requirements of both. The presence of this conflicting information also has implications for procedural complexity (Figs. 1, 2).

Year 8 English assessment rubric (p. 2)

Layer 2: procedural complexity

The presence of conflicting information in three different sections of the task sheet significantly increases the scope of the task by introducing new elements each time (see Fig. 3). For example, on the first page of the task sheet, the 'Task' is described as

Breakdown of Year 8 assessment instructions

Choose a poem from the list given to you by your teacher and use it to:

Create and deliver a presentation explaining how the poem uses language in an emotive way to express a sense of place, and evaluate your personal response to the poem.

Although this statement is broken into two sections, four ideas are presented, and each constitutes an element required to complete the task. Further information is then provided in the 'Aim' section (see Fig. 3 below), adding another four elements to the task:

This should include an analysis of how the poem uses language in an emotive way to express a sense of place and belonging and how you connect to it and what you learn about your own 'sense of place' from the poem.

Students are therefore required to complete eight elements to complete this task. Figure 3 visually maps these eight task elements to illustrate the full complexity of and contradictions in what Year 8 students are being asked to do in the assessment task.

It is important to note here that the task sheet is only one source from which students receive assessment information. Teachers often clarify the task through student questions. However, this type of clarification can increase the potential for further misunderstanding as students attempt to interpret the task sheet and to reconcile it with their teacher's verbal instructions. In other words, drawing conclusions about what is required in this task requires students to organise and prioritise both the information presented in the task sheet and the teacher's verbal instructions in class. Requiring this level of analysis and synthesis places a heavy cognitive load on 13 to 14-year-old students, and the contradictions and irregularities within the task sheet present an unnecessary level of challenge for students with ADHD or DLD. This is at odds with the Disability Standards for Education (Australian Government 2005), which calls educators to engage in assessment practices that are accessible for all.

Another factor that contributes to the procedural complexity of this assessment task is the required word count of 600 words together with the allocated speech length of 2-3 min. In the rubric on the second page, emphasis is placed on the use of a range of 'language features' to present a 'clear, highly engaging', 'cohesive', 'highly effective and reflective' presentation at the A-standard level. One of the language features assessed is pace, however, as the average number of spoken words per minute is 130 words, a more appropriate time limit for a 600-word speech is 4-5 min. Alternatively, a more appropriate word count for a 2- to 3-min speech is 250-400 words. The incompatibility of the requirements in the assessment task may negatively affect the achievement of students who attempt to present their whole speech verbally within the prescribed time limits. Furthermore, a rigid approach, where assessment modalities are prescribed-as in the requirement for a ' spoken multimodal presentation'-may result in discrimination against students with ADHD and DLD because of the nature of the language or cognitive difficulties faced by these students. Not only is this inflexibility at odds with the Disability Standards for Education (Australian Government 2005) but it is inconsistent with the Australian Curriculum, which was developed in accordance with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (Rose and Meyer 2002) precisely to enable flexibility and choice. At this point, we emphasise that we have only analysed visual and procedural complexity. The following analysis of the linguistic complexity of the task is designed to raise the awareness of assessment task designers so that they can address issues such as this in future designs.

Layer 3: linguistic complexity

For a reader to comprehend a text, both the vocabulary (that is, the words used within the text and the reader's understanding of these) and the syntax (word order, sentence and paragraph structure) must be accessible and meaningful to the reader (Nippold 2016). In attempting to help students understand the connection between the English unit and the associated assessment task, this sample task sheet outlines the 'Context', stating:

In this unit, you have explored the representation of 'sense of place' through local, Indigenous poetry and analysed how the poems create a connection to a special place through the use of poetic techniques which create imagery and evoke emotions.

This 40-word, vocabulary-rich sentence contains four verb phrases and five prepositional phrases. The linguistic length, density and structure of this sentence is taxing on the reading comprehension system and presents multiple opportunities for students with language or attention difficulties to misinterpret the message or disengage from the content. The linguistic length of the sentence is in part due to the use of prolix or unnecessarily wordy sentence construction. Furthermore, terms such as 'evoke', a low-frequency word (Australian National Corpus 2012), may not be readily understood by all Year 8 students. Thus, while this contextual information may have been provided in an attempt to support students by setting the scene of the task and modelling complex vocabulary, the language used in the Context section has the potential to instead cause comprehension difficulties, thereby reducing students' understanding of the task requirements.

Similar complexity is evident in the 'Aim' section, which utilises a complex, 42-word sentence comprising six verb phrases and five prepositional phrases:

This should include an analysis of how the poem uses language in an emotive way to express a sense of place and belonging and how you connect to it and what you learn about your own 'sense of place' from the poem.

Again, a complex syntactic structure is adopted in this sentence, where layers of meaning are built through a series of subordinated and coordinated clauses. To comprehend this sentence, a young adolescent reader must have superior working language memory, an understanding of the vocabulary used and the ability to synthesise several ideas, as we depicted earlier in Fig. 3.

In the rubric on the second page of the task sheet, the 'language features' section introduces technical, specialist discourse, relevant to the English curriculum. There is a significant difference, however, in the specialist discourse offered in the 'A' range standard versus the 'B-E' range standards in this area. For example, performances reaching an 'A' range standard are considered to demonstrate 'informal language', use of 'specialised poetic terms' and 'inclusive language', whereas tasks in the 'B-E' range demonstrate 'formal language', use 'language of judgement' and 'rhetorical devices'. It is possible that a copy-and-paste error is the reason for this inconsistency or it may be that the use of formal language in the B-E range is being taken as a signal that students have not recognised the tone considered appropriate to adopt when speaking to a fellow student audience. Either way, reliance on students' understanding of any of this technical terminology remains a concern, even if the document were consistent across the A-E standards. By including terms such as 'cohesive ties', 'inclusive language' and 'reflective' (a key term for understanding this task), the task sheet author assumes a shared meaning with the Year 8 student reader, which will depend on these terms being explicitly taught as part of classroom teaching experiences.

The tension of being transparent about marking criteria and attempting to embed fine-grained detail within the marking rubric is a challenging design issue. However, transparency can come at the cost of overloading and cluttering the rubric with too much information. If rubrics using specialist language are to be provided to students, students' comprehension of key terms should ideally be supported by a glossary that uses student-friendly definitions to ensure that students with ADHD or DLD can have access to this language on the same basis as their peers. And, although we do not have the space to analyse the effect of "competing logics" (Wall 2017) in this paper, the complexity of and contradictions within this task sheet does raise the question as to whether pressure on teachers to try and meet too many competing agendas has played a role in corrupting the integrity of this assessment task.

Discussion

Close analysis of this typical high school assessment task sheet makes this common and everyday artefact seem unfamiliar. It reveals a visually dense, procedurally difficult and linguistically challenging document. For adolescents with ADHD or DLD, it would constitute an informational minefield with their chance of doing poorly increasing with every repetition, each contradiction and each new 're-framing' of the task's aim, purpose, mode and success criteria. Certainly, students with ADHD or DLD are significantly disadvantaged as the demands of complex task sheets can work in ways that privilege students with the capacity to closely read, identify and reconcile the incompatibilities within the document to successfully execute the task. As we described earlier, inherent to the features of ADHD and DLD are difficulties with working memory, comprehension and synthesis of information. If the complexity of this task sheet creates access barriers that affect these students' ability to understand the task requirements, this will also prevent these students' from demonstrating what they have learned about the unit of study being assessed. This brings us to a key conceptual point that is fundamental to the principle of equity, and that is the a priori importance of accessibility. The driving question with which we start our discussion of the accessibility of and equity in assessment is this: Is the purpose of the assessment to grade students on their ability to decipher the assessment task sheet OR is the purpose to provide an opportunity for students to relay what they know about the text and have learned in the relevant unit of study?

We ask this question knowing that there is an historical perception that successful interpretation of an assessment task sheet is a prerequisite to demonstrating superior achievement: in that higher achieving students will "do better" in the task because they have the skills to analyse, interpret and approximate the required performance. The problem, however, is that assessment task sheets-even one as detailed as the one we have analysed-are not equally inaccessible. Design features that unnecessarily contribute to the visual, linguistic and procedural complexity of the task discriminate against students who have difficulty concentrating, processing dense tracts of text, distinguishing between important and unimportant information, and prioritising, organising and coordinating. We have chosen to focus on students with ADHD and DLD in this paper, however, the same challenges apply to students with dyslexia, students with Autism Spectrum Disorder, students with intellectual disability, students from a Language Background Other than English, Indigenous students, students with vision impairment, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. These same students can be successful under the right conditions but-as we explained earlier-assessment task sheets set what Burbules et al. ( 1982) refer to as 'conditions of access'. These are conditions that dictate implicit skills known as 'criteria of access' that students must apply to successfully complete the task: some will be relevant to the first-order purpose of the assessment, but others may not be relevant.

A key issue in relation to the task that was closely analysed in this article is whether all the skills demanded by this task sheet are relevant to the central domain and performance being assessed. To determine this, we return to the theoretical framework informing our approach to analysis, and ask:

1.
What are the conditions of access to this assessment and which criteria of access do they impose?

2.
Which of these criteria are intrinsic to the task being assessed and which are functioning like stairs at entry to the assessment hall?

Our three layers of analysis have identified numerous areas in which the conditions of access set by the task design impose additional criteria of access that distract from the first-order purpose of the task and which inadvertently discriminate against students with ADHD and DLD by requiring students to

negotiate unnecessary visual complexity,

distinguish between important and unimportant information,

decipher what action is necessary from different sections of the task sheet which contradict,

reconcile competing purposes,

deliver a written speech in too short a timeframe,

engage with long, complex sentences and instructions that were most likely written for teachers, and

interpret specialist and technical language that may or may not have been explicitly taught in class.

The key question for teachers is whether the imposition of these additional criteria is fair and, to answer it, they must ask two more questions:

1.
Are the additional criteria imposed by the assessment task sheet relevant to the core learning objectives of the curriculum and relevant unit of study (e.g. understanding literature in context, developing a personal response to literature, creating a multimodal spoken presentation)?

2.
Might these additional criteria prevent students from effectively demonstrating their knowledge, either because they cannot understand what the task is asking of them or because the task itself does not allow sufficient time or space to enable students to do justice to each component?

These are important questions for teachers to ask when examining existing assessment tasks; however, the next and most critical step is to incorporate these equity principles into task design. Proactive planning and accessible task design is the most efficient and effective way to ensure that students with ADHD and DLD-not to mention students with dyslexia, students with Autism Spectrum Disorder, students with intellectual disability, students from a Language Background Other than English, Indigenous students, students with vision impairment and students from disadvantaged backgrounds-are provided with a genuine opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned and can do.

Conclusion and recommendations

While our analysis of a typical assessment task sheet highlighted some concerns about assessment design, it is not intended to undermine the important intellectual work that teachers do in designing authentic and valid assessment. Locally designed assessment tasks enable teachers to respond to the diversity of the learners in their classroom and consider how assessment design relates to the ongoing development of those learners. Teachers draw together information from curriculum documents, school priorities, pedagogic frameworks, and knowledge of students' cultural and social communities, as well as specific learning abilities and disabilities as they design assessment tasks. They are supported by policy documents that provide general principles for the design of assessment (Queensland Studies Authority 2013; Australasian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 1995). Existing literature also includes important advice to consider the assessment from the perspective of the student (Cumming et al. 2013).

Recommendations for designing accessible assessment therefore need to consider not only accessible design elements, but also the experiences of learners, which is central to the definition of fair assessment (Klenowski 2014). Assessment task sheets are invitations to students to demonstrate their mastery of new understandings; however, these invitations must be evaluated in terms of the affordances they provide for different learners and whether learners can transform those affordances into action (Gee 2008). To conclude, we provide some additional, specific design recommendations to support teachers and student reviewers (see Table 1), as they address the important issue of access for many students based on our three layers of analysis.

Table 1 Design recommendations for equity in access

Alongside principles such as these, professional learning about conditions of access can help teachers make adjustments to their assessment designs. When teachers come to understand the barriers that conditions of access can create, they can readily 'design out' the types of accessibility issues we have identified in our analysis of the sample task sheet. In our research with two participating secondary schools, we used a preliminary version of the above recommendations in the form of an "accessibility checklist" to support teachers in their design work. Importantly, participating teachers reported that students who had not previously found success were able to demonstrate their learning with new levels of confidence. Rather than making individual adjustments after students begin to struggle, this article seeks to support teachers to learn more about accessible assessment in initial designs. Further research is needed to test the contribution that accessible assessment design can make to the engagement and achievement of all students, in addition to students with ADHD and DLD, as well as research to determine how accessible assessment design might affect teacher assessment literacy and workload.

Notes

1.

Other contributing factors are the knowledge and attitudes of teachers towards students with certain disabilities, especially ADHD and DLD (Mulholland et al. 2015; Marshall et al. 2002), and the perceived trade-off between reasonable adjustments for people with disability and rigorous academic standards (Riddell and Weedon 2006; Poed 2016).

2.

It is anticipated that this will change in 2018 when data from the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on Students with Disability (NCCD) will inform Australian Government disability loadings under "Gonski 2.0". At present, it is not clear how this change will affect the ways in which the different states and sectors allocate funding and resources.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the English Head of Department from "Happy Days High School" for granting permission for this team to analyse their school's English assessment task sheet in support of this research, and the Queensland Department of Education and Training who funded the research through their Education Horizons scheme.

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Affiliations

Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, QLD, 4001, Australia

Linda J. Graham, Haley Tancredi, Jill Willis & Kelli McGraw

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Correspondence to Linda J. Graham.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Designing out barriers to student access and participation in secondary school assessment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In an effort to support student agency in assessment, teachers seek to provide detailed instructions and advice in associated assessment task sheets. In this paper, we analyse a sample English assessment task to consider how such assessment design practices might inadvertently create barriers to access and participation.