Reading and Students with Speech or Language Impairments

Students with speech or language impairments face unique challenges when reading. Yet with targeted interventions and accommodations in reading instruction and assessment, students with these disabilities can become proficient readers. Understanding the characteristics of students with speech or language impairments that may affect reading is an important step toward developing effective instruction and appropriate assessments.

This paper is intended to begin a discussion of the issues surrounding reading and students with speech or language impairments; it is not intended to be a comprehensive research review. This paper provides: (1) an overview of the characteristics of students with speech or language impairments, (2) a description of common approaches to reading instruction, and (3) assessment approaches and issues that surround the assessment of reading for students with speech or language impairments.

The paper is one of several brief papers developed to contribute to the process of conducting research and developing accessible reading assessments for students with disabilities. Creating accessible reading assessments based on accepted definitions of reading and proficiencies of reading requires knowledge of the issues specific to each disability and how they affect reading and the assessment of reading. The information in these papers was obtained through a broad review of literature and Web sites of national agencies and organizations, along with feedback and input from professionals in the disability areas. Each paper is intended as a first step to facilitate discussions that include individuals who do not know the disability, in this case speech or language impairments, and those who may know the disability but have not considered the interaction of the disability with reading or the assessment of reading through statewide testing.

Students with Speech or Language Impairments

Approximately one million students 6-21 years of age in the United States received special education services for speech or language disabilities in the 2000-2001 school year, comprising nearly 20% of all students with disabilities in U.S. schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). These children have a number of receptive and expressive impairments, including, but not limited to, inability to understand or use language, stuttering, impaired articulation, or voice impairments. Hearing loss, neurological disorders, brain injury, mental retardation, drug abuse, physical impairments such as cleft lip or palate, and vocal abuse or misuse are all factors that can contribute to the severity of the speech or language impairment.

It has been estimated that 83,982 K-12 English language learners (ELLs) received special education services for speech or language impairments in 2001-2002. Thus, approximately 23.5% of school-age ELLs with disabilities were identified with speech or language impairments (Zehler, Fleischman, Hopstock, Pendzick, & Stephenson, 2003). Typically, to qualify for these services, ELLs must demonstrate difficulties with communication that are not related to the second language acquisition process and show that those difficulties are present in both the first and second language. The challenge of learning English and having a speech or language impairment adds another level of complexity to learning to read and demonstrating reading achievement (Muller & Markowitz, 2004).

There is evidence of a relationship between language impairments and reading disabilities, showing that a majority of native English speaking students who do not develop proficient reading skills in English had an early history of spoken-language deficits (Catts, Fey, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2002). Although the connection between language impairments and reading difficulties is not causal or inevitable, students with a history of language impairments are at risk for failure in reading achievement more than students without language impairments.

Instruction for Students with Speech or Language Impairments

Children with speech or language impairments may experience a range of challenges in the school setting due to their disability. Examples of these challenges that have been identified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) include misunderstanding social cues, showing poor judgment, having difficulty understanding and expressing language, and having difficulty with tests. These challenges may be especially apparent in noisy, complex classroom environments (ASHA, 2005a,b). ASHA cited research indicating that children who are not fluent readers by the fourth grade are likely to struggle with reading into adulthood. Students who received intervention before age five had increased opportunity for overcoming speech or language impairments, with the potential to prevent academic issues later in life (ASHA, 2005).

Children with speech and language deficits can have reading problems that fall into two categories. First, they may have difficulty with decoding, or the ability to identify printed words through letter-sound correspondences. Research has shown that children with speech and language impairments tend to show poor phonological awareness and other higher level phonological skills (Gillon, 2000; 2002) and these skills are known to be related to the successful acquisition of literacy (Adams, 1997). For these difficulties, direct instruction and practice in phonological segmentation, sound counting, and letter-sound associations have been shown to improve decoding skills (e.g., Ball & Blachman, 1991; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Second, children with speech and language impairments may have difficulty with reading comprehension because of their lack of facility with comprehending complex discourse (Bishop, 1997; Westby, 2005). In this sense, the comprehension difficulties are secondary to their weak grasp of higher level language in any modality, spoken or written. Intervention efforts to improve comprehension of spoken language would be expected to generalize to comprehension of written language, as well (Westby, 2005).

Many techniques can facilitate reading success in the classroom for students with speech or language disabilities. These techniques are generally effective for all students. Teachers can improve the learning environment for children with speech or language impairments by manipulating their approaches in a variety of ways, including seating students away from auditory or visual distractions; monitoring sources of background noise (e.g. air vents, playgrounds, hallways, street traffic); establishing a consistent class time structure and routine; maintaining the student’s focus and attention; ensuring a child is paying attention before giving directions; speaking slowly and clearly; using sequential words such as “first,” “next,” and “finally;” and using visual cues and supports to aid comprehension. In addition, Ehren (2002) suggested that for students with speech or language impairments, the speech language pathologist might work with students on vocabulary instruction to, in turn, facilitate reading comprehension; it has also been suggested that word learning strategies might be implemented to facilitate reading fluency and understanding of meaning in context (McGregor, 2005), or the scaffolding of language to support listening and expression in the context of literacy events.

Assessment of Students with Speech or Language Impairments

Students with speech or language impairments may struggle on tests because their language impairments hamper their ability to understand directions or the wording of specific test items, even when administrators read them aloud. They may also have increased test anxiety due to a history of struggling with academic tasks and the added pressure of high stakes assessments, whether the stakes are for the system or the student.

To minimize the effects of the disability on test performance, states, districts, and schools typically allow students to use accommodations during testing. Accommodations for students with speech or language impairments may include having material read aloud; having the assessment broken down into smaller parts; additional time; use of a text book or dictionary; an assistive augmentative communication device; or a variety of other accommodations.

In states’ 2003 accommodation policies, 48 states permitted tests to be read aloud, but only 3 allowed the read-aloud accommodation without any restrictions (Clapper, Morse, Lazarus, Thompson, & Thurlow, 2005). In 14 states, having a test read aloud to a student could disqualify the student from receiving a valid score. Thirty-one states allowed directions to be repeated, re-read, or clarified although there were scoring consequences in some states when this was done. Testing environment accommodations, including noise buffers and amplification equipment, were considered by a majority of states to be non-controversial accommodations. Few states have accommodation policies for ELLs with disabilities, and we know little about the accommodations typically used by ELLs with speech or language impairments.

Measuring reading proficiency is not straightforward, even for typical students. Despite the work of several expert panels and national reading initiatives, there is still disagreement on what constitutes reading proficiency. For students with speech or language impairments – who may have difficulty with sound/symbol connection, auditory processes, and language comprehension – what reading proficiency means, how to help students achieve it, and how educators measure it is even less clear.

For instance, researchers are undecided about the extent to which reading fluency predicts overall reading ability for these students. Despite considerable evidence that rapid naming (Catts, 1993) and letter identification (Catts et al., 2002) in kindergarten are excellent predictors of reading achievement in first and second grade for students in general, we do not know whether this holds true when children have speech or language impairments. And does this matter when it comes to state and district assessments? Are there aspects of these assessments that create a need for fluency skills? Do certain characteristics of students with speech or language impairments create one set of issues, and other characteristics create another?

Summary

The intent of this brief paper is to highlight issues surrounding reading and students with speech or language impairments. While not a comprehensive review, it is intended to give enough of a sense of the characteristics of the students, general instructional approaches used with them, and assessment approaches and issues to generate discussion about the possible ways in which more accessible assessments can be designed for those students who are proficient readers given their speech or language impairments. This paper is part of the background for research on accessible reading assessments conducted by the Partnership for Accessible Reading Assessments (PARA), and for discussions among collaborators on the National Accessible Reading Assessment Projects (NARAP).

References

Adams, M. (1997). The great debate: Then and now. Annals of Dyslexia, 47, 265-277.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) (2005a). Frequently asked questions: Helping children in the schools – speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Retrieved March, 2005 from the World Wide Web: http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/schools_faq.htm

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). (2005b). The roles and responsibilities of speech-language-hearing pathologists with respect to reading and writing in children and adolescents (Continuing education opportunity). Available on the World Wide Web: http://www.asha.org/about/continuing-ed/ASHA-courses/JSS/jss7420.htm.

Ball, E., & Blachman, B. (1991). Does phoneme segmentation in kindergarten make a difference in early word recognition and developmental spelling? Reading Research Quarterly, 26, 49-66.

Bishop, D. (1997). Uncommon understanding: Development and disorders of language comprehension in children. East Sussex, BN 3, 2 FA, UK: Psychology Press Limited.

Catts, H. W. (1993). The relationship between speech language impairments and reading disabilities. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36, 948-958.

Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Tomblin, J. B., & Zhang, X. (2002). A longitudinal investigation of reading outcomes in children with language impairments. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 1142-1157.

Clapper, A. T., Morse, A. B., Lazarus, S. S., Thompson, S. J., & Thurlow, M. L. (2005). 2003 state policies on assessment participation and accommodations for students with disabilities (Synthesis Report 56). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, National Center on Educational Outcomes. Retrieved August 2005, from the World Wide Web: http://cehd.umn.edu/NCEO/OnlinePubs/Synthesis56.html

Ehren, B.J. (2002, October). Vocabulary intervention to improve reading comprehension for students with learning disabilities. Perspectives on Language Learning and Education, 9(3), 12-18.

Gillon, G. (2000). The efficacy of phonological awareness intervention for children with spoken language impairment. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 31, 126-141.

Gillon, G. (2002). Follow-up study investigating the benefits of phonological awareness intervention of children with spoken language impairment. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 37, 381-400.

McGregor, K.K. (2005, October). Children’s word learning: An introduction. Perspectives on Language Learning and Education, 12(3), 3-4.

Muller, E., & Markowitz, J. (2004). Synthesis brief: English language learners with disabilities. Alexandria, VA: National Association of State Directors of Special Education Inc.

Snow, C., Burns, S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

U.S. Department of Education (2002). Twenty-fourth annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Washington, DC: Author.

Westby, C. (2005). Assessing and facilitating text comprehension problems. In H. Catts and A. Kahmi (Eds.), Language and reading disabilities-2nd Ed. (pp. 157-232). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Zehler, A. M., Fleischman, H. L., Hopstock, P. J., Pendzick, M. L., & Stephenson, T. G. (2003). Descriptive study of services to LEP students and LEP students with disabilities (No. 4 Special topic report: Findings on special education LEP students). Arlington, VA: Development Associates, Inc.

Acknowledgments

This paper was developed through a collaborative effort of numerous members of the PARA staff. The contributors are listed here alphabetically: Kristin Eisenbraun, Christopher Johnstone, Sheryl Lazarus, Kristi Liu, Danielle Matchett, Ross Moen, Mari Quenemoen, Rachel Quenemoen, Sandra Thompson, and Martha Thurlow. In addition, we had the invaluable assistance of a member of the General Advisory Committee for the National Accessible Reading Assessment Projects (NARAP), Stan Dublinske, who is Senior Advisor for Planning of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and several individuals working with him who provided detailed input, including suggestions for specific (and better) wording. These individuals included Diane Paul, Kathleen Whitmire, Rhea Paul, and Patricia Prelock.

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