Communication Impairment by:Sarah Arrowsmith

Communication Impairment
Definition:
Significantly limited, impaired, or delayed capacity to use expressive and/or receptive language, exhibited by difficulties in one or more of the following areas: speech, such as articulation and/or voice; conveying, understanding, or using spoken, written, or symbolic language.

Characteristics:
speech sound errors-
1.Distortions: A speech sound is distorted when it sounds more like the intended phoneme than another speech sound but is conspicuously wrong. The /s/ sound, for example, is relatively difficult to produce; children may produce the word “sleep” as “schleep,” “zleep,”. Some speakers have a lisp. Distortions can cause misunderstanding, although parents and teachers often become accustomed to them.

2.Substitutions: Children sometimes substitute one sound for another, as in saying “train” for “crane” or “doze” for “those.” Children with this problem are often certain they have said the correct word and may resist correction. Substitution of sounds can cause considerable confusion for the listener.

3.Omissions. Children may omit certain sounds, as in saying “cool” for “school.” They may drop consonants from the ends of words, as in “pos” for “post.” Most of us leave out sounds at times, but an extensive omission problem can make speech not understandable.

4.Additions. The addition of extra sounds makes comprehension difficult. For example, a child might say “buhrown” for “brown” or “hamber” for “hammer.”

Other Characteristics of Children with Communication Impairment:
-inability to follow directions
-slow and incomprehensible speech
-pronounced difficulties in syntax(order of words in a sentence) and articulation(manner in which sounds are formed)
-Stuttering is a disorder of speech flow that most often appears between the ages of 3 and 4 years and may progress from a sporadic to a chronic problem

Ways to Accomodate Children with Communication Impairments in the Classroom:
-Seat them in the best seat for active participation in the classroom activity
-Use first letter cueing whenever possible as a communication strategy
-Partner children up in groups to work on communication
-If Some children in the class have sever communication disabilites and use alternate ways to communicate make sure that you, as the teacher, have modeled to the other students how to communicate with that child.
-Do not seclude the student just because they take longer to communicate what they need/want/or feel.
-Encourage other classmates to accept the student with communicative disabilities
-Give them time to express themselves, do not interrupt or try to fill in gaps for them
-Give students with speech impairments oppurtunities to speak in class.
-Keep up to date on the students accomplishments in speech therapy

Organizations that provide assistance to individuals with communication impairments:

--American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) is the professional, scientific, and credentialing association for 135,000 members and affiliates who are audiologists, speech-language pathologists and speech, language, and hearing scientists.